I got a parking ticket for parking at a BART station for too long - $25.
On the ticket that was left on my car's windshield, it had an address of a website where I could pay for it online -- www.ticketwizard5000.com.
Hm... I thought - what kind of official goverment site is that? - just looking at the name. Maybe some offline phisher created an official looking bart violation ticket with the url of their phish site? That'd be a clever scam - I thought.
Then I went to the site, and it looks like complete amaterish design, very unprofessional looking. Hm... I thought again.
Then I saw the https in the url, and lock icon in the status bar. I double-clicked on the lock icon and it said certificate is good, and gave the name of a certificate authority XRamp Security Services GS CA. The certificate path mentioned some names that I did not recognize either. Also, the web page itself said that it was secured by the Equifax Certificate - I saw no mention of Equifax on the certificate itself though. Hm... I kept thinking.
The site prompted me to enter the violation # and time, and when I did, it showed me details about my violation, as well as my car registration info (this was a pretty assuring sign, finally, but I wasn't fully convinced or comfortable yet).
Then I went to a search engine and searched for "ticketwizard5000", and then I saw various other sites mentioning the ticketwizard5000 site, all actually talking about that being a place where one could pay for BART violations. Most importantly, I saw that www.bart.gov <http: /> itself mentioned the ticketwizard5000 site as the place to pay online. With that knowledge, I had enough confidence to go back to ticketwizard5000 and enter my name, address, phone, and credit card info that they requested. Of course, if I had Identity Defender, I would have opted to give them a one-time credit card, authorized only for the amount up to $30.
So there you go - I gave them my info - and I *hope* that everything was legit. But it sure was a somewhat disconcerting experience that wasted me 15 min.
