Verdict
adsafrica.co.za appears legitimate.
Our checks found nothing pointing to fraud. Ordinary care still applies when you pay or sign in.
| What this site appears to be | Public classifieds listing page for South Africa with many categories and recent ads. Contains privacy/consent banner referencing many ad partners and Google services. Appears content-driven and monetized through advertising and listing services. |
|---|
Evidence status and limitations
Evidence completeness: UNKNOWN
- The real-world operator identity was not independently verified.
- Module-level completeness metadata is unavailable for this legacy report.
At a glance
The checks that decide most of this verdict.
| Malware engines | None flagged itVirusTotal | Clear |
|---|---|---|
| Google Safe Browsing | Not listedGoogle | Clear |
| Abuse reports on the host | 0 reportsAbuseIPDB; shared hosting inflates this count | Noted |
| Domain age | 17 years oldRegistered history | Clear |
| Web archive | Archived since 2009459 snapshots | Clear |
| Certificate | Encrypted connectionIssued by YR1 | Noted |
The page as captured
No screenshot is retained for this report.
Key findings
- Automated classification: Not Scam.
- Domain age: more than 10 years (registration continuity).
- Public web-archive history exists since 2009.
- No flags from the reputation services TrustSniffer consulted at assessment time.
Full analysis
Overview
adsafrica.co.za is a South African public classifieds and marketplace website presenting user-generated listings across areas such as vehicles, property, goods, jobs, services, pets, and community notices. Its apparent business model is to provide free listings while supporting the service through advertising, third-party advertising partnerships, and potentially promoted or premium listing services.
Scam/Impersonation Risk
No contradictions were observed. The captured homepage is consistent with a content-driven classifieds service and shows no brand-impersonation, phishing, credential-harvesting, wallet, or malicious-script indicators. The site’s apparent legitimacy is supported by sustained historical continuity, clean evaluated external-reputation results, and stable page behavior; however, the real-world operator remains independently unverified, so the site’s apparent legitimacy should not be treated as proof of operator identity.
- Domain registered through 1-Grid on 2009-10-29 and recorded as approximately 16.79 years old.
- Web archives contain 459 snapshots spanning 2009–2026, covering 18 tracked years.
- Evaluated reputation checks recorded 0 malicious detections, 0 suspicious detections, and no confirmed phishing or impersonation finding.
- The homepage contains no login form, sensitive form, hidden form, wallet connection, or external password-submission destination.
Regulatory Verification Notes
The website presents itself as a general marketplace rather than as a financial, investment, or other regulated service. No licensing claim or registration number was identified in the captured site material; this is a transparency item for confirmation rather than evidence of a scam. The available evidence is consistent with an established website, but the operator’s legal identity is not independently verified. A third-party broker-intelligence check produced no match, which is contextual reputational information and not a licensing determination.
- The homepage title and visible content identify a South African free-classifieds service rather than a regulated financial offering.
- Hosted on AS328364 through Host Africa (Pty) Ltd, South Africa.
- TLS certificate issued by YR1 at DV validation level, valid to 2026-09-29.
- The homepage displays a privacy and consent notice covering Google services and 1,536 advertising partners.
What to Verify Next
Before credential or payment interactions, an organization should independently confirm the operator’s legal identity, the applicable terms governing listings and transactions, and the availability of return, dispute, and payment-protection mechanisms. For individual marketplace transactions, seller identity, item ownership, pricing, and payment details should be validated through independent channels, with payment methods offering meaningful dispute rights.
- The homepage provides listing and account-navigation functions but does not, in the captured material, independently establish the operator’s legal identity.
- The privacy banner states that consent preferences can be changed or withdrawn through the site’s privacy controls.
- The captured page contains no sensitive transaction form or untrusted form destination.
Summary Verdict
The overall posture is high trust and low risk, and the available evidence is consistent with an established, apparently legitimate website. No scam, phishing, impersonation, or other direct contradiction was identified, while independent confirmation of the real-world operator remains outstanding.
Infrastructure Integrity
Cloudflare provides the observed CDN/WAF layer, with a Cloudflare edge address and potential origin candidates visible in the infrastructure observations. This protective architecture can reduce direct exposure of the service and is a mitigating control, but infrastructure protection alone does not establish legitimacy.
Closing Assessment
Normal browsing and ordinary marketplace use are proportionate to the current assessment, subject to independent merchant-identity, return-policy, and payment-protection checks before credentials or funds are committed.
Written analysis generated 2026-08-11 by the TrustSniffer Analysis Engine from the evidence in this report.
What the analysis found
No rule findings contributed to this verdict.
Identity verification
| Status | UNVERIFIED |
|---|---|
| Identity score | 30/100 |
| Identity verification confidence | 50% |
- No on-site identity signals detected
Identity verification measures whether the site can be independently connected to a real-world brand or person. It is separate from the classification confidence.
What TrustSniffer observed
First-party facts recorded during the assessment of adsafrica.co.za.
- The request stayed on adsafrica.co.za. It was not redirected to another domain. Clear
- Registration is published under 1-Grid. Clear
- DNS for this domain is served by ihc.ru, across 2 name servers. Noted
- The registration is paid up to 2026-10-29. Noted
- The earliest public archive of this site is from 2009-10-31. Clear
- It is hosted on Host Africa (Pty) Ltd, from a server in ZA. Noted
Domain intelligence
| Registrar | 1-Grid |
|---|---|
| Hosting | Host Africa (Pty) Ltd - Host Africa (Pty) Ltd, ZA |
| Country | ZA |
| Server IP | 102.130.123.121 |
| Name servers | ns1.ihc.ru, ns2.ihc.ru |
| SSL issuer | YR1 |
| SSL expiry | 2026-09-29 |
| Domain age | 16.79 years (continuous registration) |
| Domain expiry | 2026-10-29 |
| Archive first seen | 2009-10-31 |
| Archive snapshots | 459 |
| Reputation | VirusTotal: 0 flagged | AbuseIPDB: 0 reports | Google Safe Browsing: 0 matches |
About this assessment
A trust score summarises the evidence TrustSniffer could collect about adsafrica.co.za at assessment time. It is a starting point for your own judgement, not a guarantee: a high score means the signals were consistent with a legitimately operated site, a low or critical score means several risk patterns were present.
TrustSniffer assesses a website from the evidence it can collect at a point in time: domain registration and age, hosting and certificate, the content the site served, and third-party reputation feeds. A score is a summary of that evidence, not a guarantee and not a legal finding. There is no human rating and no user review in it. A site can change after it is assessed.