About

Why this exists

Before paying an unfamiliar supplier there are four things worth checking, and they live in four different places: the VAT registry, an IBAN validator, the EU sanctions list, and the domain's DNS records. Checking all four by hand takes ten minutes and most people check one, or none. This runs all four from a single submission.

The sanctions check is the part no other free tool does, and the sending-domain check is the part most closely connected to how invoice fraud actually works.

What it deliberately does not do

• It never gives a single verdict. There is no "safe to pay" badge and no risk score. Four checks, four independent answers. A score would invite people to act on a number that cannot carry that much meaning.
• It does not claim a sanctions determination. Name similarity against a published list is a prompt to look properly, not a legal finding.
• It does not tell you the bank account is right. No public data source can. That is why every result says to confirm by phone.

Why it is free

It costs almost nothing to run. It sits on a server that was already there for other things, uses public data sources, and stores nearly nothing. There is no company behind it, no funding to justify, and nothing to upsell — so there is no reason to put a check behind a signup form.

There are no ads and no trackers beyond a self-hosted, cookieless page counter. Seeprivacy for exactly what that means.

Who made it

Built and run by one person, alongsidenotspoofed.com, a free email authentication checker. The two share the sending-domain machinery.

Corrections

If a check gives a wrong answer — particularly a sanctions match against a company that is clearly not on the list — that is worth reporting, and worth fixing. The matching threshold is tuned to avoid exactly that, and a real example is more useful than any amount of tuning in the abstract.

Sources

• EU VAT — the Commission's VIES service, live per check.
• UK VAT — HMRC's published VAT checking API.
• Sanctions — the EU consolidated list of persons, groups and entities subject to financial sanctions, refreshed daily and screened locally. Only the version in the Official Journal is authoritative.
• Domain — public DNS records and RDAP registration data.