ShopCheck fades the junk out of Amazon, shows where Instagram ads really lead, and warns you before a sketchy store takes your money.
Download ShopCheck · free · v1.2For Chrome, Edge and Brave on Windows or Mac. No account. No tracking. Nothing leaves your computer.
Amazon is flooded with "brands" like SZHLUX and WNPETHOME — random letters trademarked so a factory can sell the same item under a dozen names. ShopCheck spots the pattern and fades those listings, so what's left are brands with a reputation to lose. Hover to peek; click Show if you still want a look.
Instagram hides the destination behind its own redirect link. Every Sponsored post gets a small strip naming the actual store and a quick read — Known, Unfamiliar, or Looks risky — before you tap.
Land on a shop ShopCheck doesn't recognize and a banner appears: LOW RISK, CAUTION, or HIGH RISK, with a "Why" list you can open. Trust or block a store once and it remembers.
The toolbar icon is a status light. It turns green on a trusted store or Amazon, amber on a store that needs a second look, and red on one with serious red flags — so you can tell before you even read the banner.
Shopping extensions ask for permission to read every page you visit — and most of them do exactly that, then sell it. ShopCheck asks for the same permission, because it has to read the store page to check it. The difference is what happens next: nothing.
fetch — you'll find none.ShopCheck isn't in the Chrome Web Store, so you load it yourself. Chrome calls this "Developer mode," but it's three clicks.
Download and unzipClick the download button above. In your Downloads folder, right-click shopcheck.zip → Extract All… → Extract. You get one shopcheck folder with the files directly inside it. Move that folder somewhere permanent, like Documents — Chrome keeps using it.
Open the extensions pageIn Chrome's address bar type chrome://extensions and press Enter. (Edge: edge://extensions. Brave: brave://extensions.)
Turn on Developer modeTop-right corner of that page. Click the switch so it turns blue.
Load the folderClick Load unpacked (top-left), choose the shopcheck folder, and click Select Folder. A ShopCheck card appears.
Pin it (optional)Click the puzzle-piece icon next to the address bar and pin ShopCheck. That button opens the settings.
Then search for anything on Amazon. If some results are faded with a small badge in the corner, it's working.
Sometimes. Unfamiliar brands aren't always bad brands. Faded items are still there — hover to see them, click Show to reveal one, or Trust to whitelist the brand forever. Switch to Relaxed in settings if it's too aggressive, or Label only to mark without fading.
No. It can tell you a store looks like one. It can't see how old the domain is or whether other customers got their orders. For anything marked CAUTION or HIGH RISK, search the store name plus "reviews" and "scam," and pay with a credit card or PayPal so you can dispute the charge.
Store review takes time and brings its own rules; for now this is shared directly. The trade-off is the manual install above. The upside is you can read exactly what you're running.
Firefox: yes, with one line added to the manifest (see the README in the download). Safari: not yet.
Not yet. Mobile Chrome doesn't run extensions. It works in desktop browsers, which is also where most of the checkout happens.
A list of about 600 established brands ships inside the extension, plus the ones you've trusted. Anything else is scored on how much it looks like a trademark-squat name — all caps, almost no vowels, long consonant runs, odd letter pairs.