Advice on the internet

While surfing the internet, you will come across internet sites that give investment advice or tips for investment:

Some of these tips are made by people who are not licensed investment advisers and are not qualified to give advice.
The information you find on the internet may be wrong or misleading.
Some web pages repeat incorrect rumours.

Is the adviser licensed?

Deal only with holders of an Australian financial services licence and their employees or authorised representatives.

By law they must act honestly, efficiently and fairly. You have legal rights that help protect you. You can check if the adviser is licensed or authorised to give advice.

Here's how to run a free safety check on our databases for names of people or companies licensed to give you advice

If the adviser is not licensed in Australia

If the adviser is not from Australia, you may not get protection under Australian law:

We may not be able to help you if something goes wrong. We work closely with overseas regulators, but it can be difficult for us to fully enforce the law against people based overseas.
It can also be more difficult for you to enforce your rights against them.

Information about investing overseas

Getting good advice

To find out how to choose the right financial adviser, read our booklet Getting good advice.

What can ASIC do?

Companies or people without an Australian financial services licence may be breaking the law if they make recommendations or provide unsubstantiated information on shares and other financial products on the internet. We will take action against unlicensed people who provide financial advice and we can act to stop them publishing false or unsubstantiated information.

Read ASIC acts to protect consumers in chatroom and ASIC stops unlicensed advice from Sharepro.

The ease of access and novelty of the internet lulls some people into a false impression that the law does not apply to their activities. This is not the case. We will enforce the full range of laws about false and misleading information, insider trading and requirements about licensing, prospectuses, product disclosure statements, hawking of financial products and financial markets.

Please tell us about suspicious financial advice

We would like to prevent unlicensed or false financial advice from being offered on the internet, so we can protect investors. If you see something on the internet that looks suspicious, we'd like to hear about it. Please call our Infoline on 1300 300 630 or email us at infoline@asic.gov.au.

More information

Investing on the internet

FIDO Website: Printed 07/31/2010