Unfortunately, we live in a world full of scams and imposters. Every day you’ve got to deal with phone number spoofers that fool your caller ID into thinking your neighbor is giving you a ring. You receive texts from bots that sound like they're trying to start a conversation. You face emails that look like they’re from your cable company but contain links that will unleash a virus in your computer or steal your bank account number.
The world of social media ads and e-commerce sites is also full of companies trying to take your money without sending you the products they claim to sell. Lately several websites have been impersonating Bened Life and/or Neuralli® products. These sites may ship a product to you that has no PS128 in it, or they may just take your money and send you nothing at all.
It’s hard to know where to turn for truth, so let’s talk about how to spot false information on product websites. Here’s what to know to keep yourself safer when shopping for PS128 or other products online.
Bened Life is the only source of PS128TM in the USA
One thing that’s crucial to remember is that the probiotic strains in Neuralli® MP and Neuralli® Mood are proprietary. Nobody other than Bened Life sells PS128TM in the United States or Canada. The patents and trademarks for PS128TM, PS23TM and Neuralli® belong to our parent company, and no one else within North America has them.
If you notice any other website selling PS128 on Google, social media, or elsewhere, do not order from it - it is a fake. Likewise, if you see anyone selling PS128 on Amazon other than Bened Life, that’s also a fake. You can contact our Customer Happiness team at [email protected] to report a scam website.
Not every website that looks like Bened Life is Bened Life!
Not only are there companies claiming to sell PS128, or even claiming to sell Neuralli Mood or Neuralli MP, some are pretending to be Bened Life. There are scammers copy-pasting much of our website onto their own, sometimes even putting our name on the pages, and trying to bilk you out of their hard-earned money. Some have even imitated our URL, simply by adding or removing a letter.
How can you spot a fake website?
Because so many of these scam websites keep popping up, we wanted to take a minute to talk about how to spot fake Neuralli - and how to spot online scams in general - to help keep our community safe.
There are a few things to look out for if you suspect a website is fake. Many scam sites leave telltale sloppiness and/or fakery in the content on their website, discussed in the next section. Some use a web address (URL) that is close to, but not exactly the same as, the website they are imitating. Others can be detected by looking at more technical aspects of the page. Here’s what to do:
Look at the URL carefully
The URL is the address for the website you’re on. When a website gets popular, scammers will buy up websites that slightly misspell its name. For example, right now you’re at benedlife.com. But if your finger slips and you put in an extra letter, then suddenly you’ve reached an imposter site. Some of these sites may even show up on Google if you’re looking for discounts on Neuralli MP or PS128.
People who set up sites like this are trying to trick you on purpose - to take your hard-earned cash or to steal your sensitive personal information. Sometimes they don’t even wait for you to make a typo - they’ll post advertisements that look legitimate to trick you into clicking through to the fake site.
When you look at the URL to make sure you’re at the right place, it can be hard to tell a subtle misspelling from the real deal. But it's worth taking a few extra seconds to examine it closely.
Look for the lock symbol
The Internet uses a system called HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) to transfer data between computers. But because fraud is such an issue, the modern Internet has moved on to HTTPS - which is just, HTTP but Secure.
HTTPS uses encryption to make sure that the information transferred between your computer and the one where the website lives stays secure. On your web browser - the program you use to get online, like Chrome or Internet Explorer or Safari - this security is symbolized by a little lock next to the web address.
Not every website uses HTTPS. But if you’re doing something important - like spending money on a probiotic - then you should look for that lock to make sure the website is secure. Do NOT purchase from an unsecure website!
However, even if the website has the lock, it’s still not a guarantee that you’re at the right place. Scam sites can use encryption and HTTPS and try to trick you in other ways.
Check the website's ownership
This is a little trickier. But if you suspect foul play, it’s worth taking the time to make sure you’re safe. You can actually look up the owner of a website, its age, and more. Use the WHOIS tool to look up who’s registered a website, how long they’ve had it, and more.
For example, when you go to WHOIS and look up our website, it tells you that Benedlife.com was registered in 2021, and that it’s registered through GoDaddy. The registration is private, which doesn’t tell you much on its own.
But when you use WHOIS to look up a suspicious site, you may see a different picture. Many of these sites will be registered much more recently. The registration may also not be from a reputable company. Many of these fake sites still use reliable providers like GoDaddy, but you may also see less-recognizable names.
Also consider where the site is registered. For example, Bened Life is based in the U.S., with a parent company in Taiwan. But one of the recent fakes that was recently taken down was based out of China. And while we do have partners doing business in China, they don’t sell to the U.S.
You can also look at the security certificate for a website. Clicking on that little lock next to the web address gives you the option to look at it. This information may be overwhelming, but it’s good to know it’s there. Often, if there’s a problem with the security certificate (this may be called an SSL), your computer will warn you. It’s good to pay attention to those warnings.
How can you spot scam PS128 sellers online?
Any website claiming to sell PS128 to people in the United States that is not Benedlife.com is a scam site. Beyond that, and the technical ways to spot a fake website mentioned, what are signs that an e-commerce website may be a scam?
There are signs and clues you may see peppered through a site that can help you figure out if it’s legitimate or not. Whether it’s claiming to sell a product at a “too good to be true” price or has other "over the top" claims, here are some red flags to watch for.
Sloppy writing and misspellings
Real businesses hire writers to make the pages on their site. They hire editors and make sure that everything looks good before each page goes live. Every now and then, mistakes happen. But if you see a lot of typos on a website, odds are that the website isn’t legitimate. Proceed with caution, as you likely will not receive the goods you’re expecting.
Some red flags of scam e-commerce sites - default text that has not been changed, a company address that isn’t actually a building, an email address that doesn’t look real, photos of employees or users that are a match to a stock image in an image search, a lack of mention of any real people at all on the website.
Every page on Bened Life’s site starts with a real human writer, from our #ActuallyAutistic bloggers to our science writers and more. Then it goes to an editor, who makes sure everything reads well and does a preliminary check for issues. A regulatory compliance officer makes sure that we follow all of the laws that apply to the claims we can make. An SEO editor makes sure that our pages and blogs are written in such a way that search engines can find us. And when it’s relevant, our community officer makes sure our content is written using language and framing that respects and represents the communities we serve.
That’s a lot of effort - and a lot of time and money - to produce one page of one website. But that’s one of the ways that we make sure that the people who find us can trust us. You can see the people behind Bened Life on our team page, and you’ll find many of them on LinkedIn as well, showing that they are real people who work for us.
AI content
AI-generated content is getting better all the time, but it has some fatal flaws. People think that AI language models retain information and serve that information when asked. But that’s not how AI writing actually works.
AI large language models (LLMs) store all the writing they absorb. But they don’t know truth from fiction or lies. They just look at all the sentences they’re fed and build new sentences, word by word, based on what word they calculate is most likely to appear next.
That’s why they get so many basic facts wrong about personal details or math. It’s also why you can make up a phrase and ask for a definition, and the LLM will make up a definition for you. They’re not retaining facts, and they don’t understand if a question is ridiculous or not.
AI is often used by scammers who want to make as much money as possible with as little effort as possible. However, when writing about a unique product like a probiotic that has primarily brain benefits, an AI will make mistakes. If you're on site that says it's selling PS128 for gut benefits, or that says Neuralli MP has 10 strains in it, you are in the wrong place.
Plagiarized content
Plagiarism is another short-cut that scammers use to create a convincing website with as little effort as possible. Many websites claiming to sell PS128 or Neuralli have stolen entire pages of content from benedlife.com and simply pasted it onto their own website. Not sure if you’re on the right site? Try copying and pasting a paragraph from the website you’re curious about into the search engine of your choice, and see if it matches any others.
While duplicated product descriptions are common for items that are sold on many reseller websites (such as name-brand shoes or name-brand pots and pans), there ARE NO authorized resellers of Bened Life products or strains.
A flood of reviews
One of the first things a scammer will do - on a Shopify e-commerce website, on Amazon, or anywhere else they might want to game the system - is generate a ton of fake reviews. Years ago they would often do this through a low-paid contractor in another country. Today, they often use “AI” LLMs to do that work.
If the reviews are very similar looking, sound like a marketer wrote them, or if there’s an impossibly large number of them, those can be signs that they aren’t real. You can combine your investigation of the website’s ownership date with the number of reviews to sniff out many scams.
Some sites may simply claim to have thousands of reviews, but when you look more closely, you may realize that you can't actually see any or most of them, suggesting the number is simply a lie.
Incorrect information
You may also notice websites that mention details about Neuralli Mood on the product page for Neuralli MP, and vice versa. These kinds of sloppy mistakes suggest that the website was put together by a scammer who was not paying attention.
A lot of Bened Life imposter websites will also put wrong information about Neuralli products out there. For instance, you may see scam websites claim that Neuralli MP doesn’t need to be refrigerated. (It does!) They may also say it primarily helps with digestive issues. (It doesn't!)
Of course, it’s hard to spot wrong information about Neuralli MP if you learn about the brand from a fake website in the first place! But hopefully, learning this information will help you keep your guard up against scammers in the future.
High claims and low prices
All of our claims are backed up by scientific research and are carefully worded. We spend time and care ensuring that we respect everything we are and are not allowed to say about a probiotic medical food like Neuralli MP or a supplement like Neuralli Mood. We won’t ever make wild claims or sky-high promises. Scammers often do.
Likewise, if the price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Our product pricing reflects the fact that we’ve put a great deal of time, money, and effort into researching these probiotic strains. We’ve taken care to make sure that they work, and to understand what they can and cannot do.
We encourage you to join our email list to be notified of semi-annual sales on our products. If you find cut-rate PS128 elsewhere, remember that it simply isn’t real.
Examples of fake PS128 sellers - and how to tell
Nozorn dot com
This scam website claims to be selling Neuralli Mood and Neuralli MP. However, no one in the U.S. or Canada is authorized to sell these products except Bened Life. They’ve used a lot of Bened Life’s website content as their own, and they’ve stolen our images to make themselves look real.
How can you tell that this website is fake?
- The only place to get Neuralli MP or Neuralli Mood is at Benedlife.com. No other website that does business in the US or Canada has these products.
- If you click the lock, go to the options, and look at the security certificate, you can see some fishy things. Nobody is registered as the owner of this site.
- If you go to WHOIS and look them up, you’ll see they registered the website this year. While they are registered through a reputable domain company - GoDaddy - they’re brand new.
- In spite of this newness, they claim to have over 45,000 reviews. You also cannot click to see these reviews.
- Their prices are “too good to be true”.
- They say at the bottom of their homepage that Neuralli MP is coming to market soon, even though Neuralli MP has been available for years.
- They’ve copied the Bened Life “about” page, which makes it look like they have a diverse team that includes Autistic team members. But while we actually have a page about our staff, they don’t.
Reviestlife dot com
This website has products with similar names, labels, and ingredients to Bened Life products, as well as hidden pages claiming to sell Bened Life products.
How can you tell that this website is fake?
- They claim to have products with L. plantarum PS128 and HT L. paracasei PS23, but the only place to get these strains is at Benedlife.com.
- They claim to have over 45,000 reviews on the homepage, but only ~500 reviews are viewable.
- The benefits of products containing PS128 are described as improving gut and digestive health. However, PS128 is a psychobiotic - a strain that confers mental and neurological health benefits.
- The "MP" product bottle says it is a dietary supplement, but the product page mentions diseases multiple times, which is illegal to do in the US.
- A Google image search of the photo of a doctor on the homepage shows that it is a stock photo. It is not possible to verify that this person is real.
- A message at the bottom of the screen claims they have 100k followers on Facebook, but they do not have a social media account at all.
- The mailing address is not real. It maps to the middle of a street.
- The footer says that Reviest is a joint venture between OneSolution LLC and Nutriworld Ltd. An internet search reveals that Nutriworld refers either to a UK company that was dissolved in 2018 or a Vietnamese maker of mushroom products. In neither case is it a probiotics company.
Stay vigilant
It’s sad that we live in a world with so much fraud and deception. But since we don’t get to choose that, we have to do the next best thing - learn how to recognize a fake. Keeping these tips in mind as you go about your online life can help you avoid tricksters, and keep your data and your money more secure.
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