Disclaimer and methodology
What this website is
This website documents patterns of fraudulent supplier and enquiry campaigns aimed at businesses. It is not a credit agency, a register or a court. It gathers what public sources already say about a domain, a part number or a VAT identification number, sets that beside what the approach itself claimed, and publishes the comparison so that a business receiving the next such approach can see it before it ships goods or pays an invoice.
Where the material comes from
Every alert is built from sources that anyone can check: domain registry records retrieved over RDAP, the European Commission’s VIES service for VAT identification numbers, public certificate transparency logs, copies held by the Internet Archive, the technical headers of the e-mails themselves, search results, and what each website publishes about itself, including its own legal notice. Each statement of fact is shown with the source it came from and the date it was retrieved.
How an alert is checked before it is published
We treat this site as journalistic-editorial telemedia and apply the duty of care in Section 19 MStV: before publication, material is checked as far as the circumstances require as to its content, its origin and its truth. In practice that means each factual statement traces to a named source and a retrieval date; the evidence for every alert is written up and kept, because it is what substantiates the alert for as long as it stands; and no alert publishes itself. Each one is drafted, read against its stored evidence and released by a person.
Facts and assessment are kept apart
This separation is deliberate and it is the most important thing on this page. The Verified facts section of an alert carries only checkable information from the sources named above — statements capable of being proved true or false. The Our assessment section carries our evaluation of what those facts mean. It is an expression of opinion within the meaning of Art. 5(1) of the German Basic Law, it is marked as such, and it is not a judicial finding, a conviction or a determination of guilt. Inferences belong there and appear nowhere else.
How certain we are, and how we say so
Alerts are not all equally certain, and each one states which of three levels it belongs to rather than leaving a reader to guess. Reported — not yet verified means an approach has been reported to us and we have not yet been able to confirm it. Treat with caution means some claims made by the operation do not hold up against public records. Strong documentary evidence of fraud means public records contradict the operation’s own claims about itself. The level is chosen on what the evidence about the supplier can carry, and no more.
No statements about private individuals
Alerts concern domains, business presences and campaigns, not named private individuals. Where an e-mail address forms part of the evidence, only role-based company addresses such as info@ or sales@ are shown, and addresses identifying a person are masked. Naming a domain says nothing about earlier or later holders of that same domain, and nothing about any business that merely shares a name.
The business that reported an approach is never named
Alerts describe who was approached only in general terms. The reporting business is not identified, and the report form asks for no name, e-mail address or company in the first place.
Currency of the information
Registry data is re-queried at intervals and each alert shows when its records were last re-checked. The position can change after publication: a domain can be sold, a registration renewed, a website taken down or rebuilt. The date shown is the position as at that date and nothing more.
Right of reply, and corrections
Anyone affected by a factual claim made here may require a reply to be published under Section 20 MStV. A reply is carried free of charge, without insertions or omissions, in the same presentation as the claim it answers and in direct connection with it, for as long as that claim is offered.
Separately, and more simply, anyone may write to info@hytrade24.com and ask for a correction. Every submission is examined, and anything shown to be inaccurate is corrected or removed without delay, with the correction disclosed. No payment is accepted at any time, from anyone, for the inclusion, alteration or removal of an entry, and none has ever been sought or received.
No legal, financial or investment advice
Nothing here is a substitute for legal advice or for commercial due diligence in an individual case. The decision whether to enter into a business relationship is yours alone, and it should rest on your own enquiries as well as on anything published here.
Responsibility for our own content
We are responsible for the content we publish ourselves under the general law. Where material reaches us from third parties — a report sent through the form, for example — we are not obliged to monitor it in advance or to search actively for circumstances indicating unlawfulness; the liability privileges in Art. 4 to 6 of the Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065), together with Section 7 DDG, apply. Duties to remove or block material under the general law are unaffected: as soon as we learn of a specific infringement we will remove the material concerned without delay.
Links to other websites
This site links to external websites, including the sites an alert concerns, public registers and archived copies. We have no influence over their content, which is the responsibility of the operator of the site in question. Linking to a website is not an endorsement of it, and in the case of a site an alert concerns it plainly is not. Such links were checked for recognisable infringements when they were set; continuous monitoring without a specific indication of an infringement is not reasonable, and on becoming aware of one we will remove the link without delay.
Copyright
The content and works created by us on these pages are subject to German copyright law. Reproduction, adaptation, distribution and any kind of exploitation beyond the limits of copyright require our written consent. Quotation for the purpose of warning other businesses is welcome, and a short quotation with a link to the alert it came from needs no permission. Where content here did not originate with us, third-party rights are respected and material from other sources is identified as such; if you notice an infringement nonetheless, please tell us and we will remove the material without delay.