How to find the genuine websites for consulates, embassies, and immigration offices around the world?
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 22 Jul, 2023
- |
While I can’t answer “around the world” a lot of countries have government secondary top domains which is a good indication of authenticity. For example
- http://www.state.gov/ .gov for USA
- https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/foreign-commonwealth-office *.gov.uk for the UK.
- http://www.kum.gov.hu/ *.gov.hu for Hungary
- https://www.bmeia.gv.at/en/ *.gv.at for Austria
- http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/germany-allemagne/jobs-travaux/index.aspx?lang=eng *.gc.ca for Canada
- http://dfat.gov.au/pages/default.aspx *.gov.au for Australia
- http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/ Nothing for Germany.
So you can always just Google Foreign Affairs countryname and then note the secondary level domain and from there on Google for whatever you need and if the domain is the same, it is legit.
If official websites from the country whose embassy you are looking for are unhelpful, you can also try official websites from the receiving country. When it is present, this information is usually in the “Entry requirements” section of the Foreign Affairs ministry’s travel advice. For example:
- Embassy of Bangladesh in Paris on the website of the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs
- Link to the website of the St Vincent High Commission in London on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Foreign Travel Advice website.
Another potential source is Embassy Worldwide. I have no idea how up-to-date and/or comprehensive it really is but it does claim:
Embassy-WorldWide.com is the most reliable and accurate directory of embassies, consulates and other diplomatic representations.
However, World embassy page (as linked to by @Nean Der Thal) makes a similar claim and does seem more ‘substantial’.
Comparing just Saint Vincent Grenadines Embassy in United Kingdom the email addresses on the two sites are different ([email protected] cf. [email protected], with neither that shown at the foot of their FB page: [email protected].)
The embassy finder is a good website, select a country and it lists all its embassies and consulates around the world with phone numbers, address, email and website if available. I have noticed it that it only lists official sites if found as most of embassies for the third world countries do not actually have official websites and if it does, not for all its embassies/consulates usually just the ones in big countries. The absence of official sites for embassies could be one of the reasons behind finding many fake sites for embassies.
The easiest ways to go about finding genuine websites is to look for them from the website of the Ministry or Department of Foreign Affairs or Department of State. Like the one from Singapore. These usually have links to embassies in the countries where they exist or in other cases they have indication on which government provides consular services for a government of a particular country in case there are no diplomatic presence such as US in Cuba.
In other cases you can look for embassy of some country in another country and look for sites that have a header on the page with an official seal though this is not foolproof by any means.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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