Verdict
astarresearch.com shows high-risk / scam indicators.
This assessment found strong scam indicators. Do not pay, sign in, or share personal details with this site.
| What this site appears to be | Astar Research corporate site describing market research services (B2B, consumer, healthcare), featuring blog posts, a contact email, and a physical address. Calls to action include 'Request a bid' and project inquiry. |
|---|
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 | 15 flagged itVirusTotal | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Google Safe Browsing | Not listedGoogle | Clear |
| Abuse reports on the host | 9% confidenceAbuseIPDB, 5 reports; shared hosting inflates reports | Clear |
| Domain age | 2.4 years oldRegistered history | Clear |
| Web archive | Archived since 1999Public history exists | Clear |
| Certificate | Encrypted connectionIssued by YE1 | Noted |
The page as captured
Key findings
- Automated classification: Sensitive Interaction Risk.
- Domain age: 1 to 3 years (registration continuity).
- Public web-archive history exists since 1999.
- At least one reputation service TrustSniffer consulted had flagged this domain at assessment time.
Full analysis
Security Alert
Fortinet, Kaspersky, Sophos flagged this site in external intelligence checks, indicating elevated compromise/scam exposure that requires immediate caution.
This website is a corporate market-research services site presented as “Astar Research,” offering B2B, consumer, and healthcare research, survey programming, and tailored data insights through a project-inquiry model.
Scam/Impersonation Risk
The site’s service-oriented presentation contains no page-level phishing indicators, login form, sensitive form, or detected brand-impersonation signal. However, this benign presentation is contradicted by material external threat intelligence: the domain is listed on external blacklists, and 15 malicious detections were recorded, including detections from Fortinet, Kaspersky, and Sophos. This constitutes a confirmed reputational contradiction and creates a critical risk for sensitive interaction. Separately, five abuse reports are associated with an IP attributed to shared CDN infrastructure; that signal is relevant context but is not, by itself, proof that the website operator caused the reported activity.
- The homepage presents Astar Research as a market-research provider and contains no observed login, credential-capture, wallet, or hidden-form functionality.
- External reputation assessment recorded 15 malicious detections and a confirmed blacklist status for the domain, with Fortinet, Kaspersky, and Sophos among the detecting vendors.
- Five abuse reports were recorded against IP address 31.43.160.6; the attribution identifies Framer B.V. shared infrastructure and classifies the address as CDN usage.
Regulatory Verification Notes
The available content describes a commercial research provider and presents a physical address and contact route, but the real-world operator remains independently unverified. No license, registration number, or licensing authority is claimed in the supplied site content; for a market-research business this is primarily a corporate-identity and disclosure matter rather than a standalone indication of misconduct. The external blacklist and malicious detections materially reduce confidence in relying on the site's stated identity, despite technically valid transport security and identifiable hosting.
- The homepage identifies the business as “Astar Research” and describes B2B, consumer, healthcare, survey-programming, and tailored-insight services.
- The domain was registered through GoDaddy.com, LLC on 2024-04-04 and is approximately 2.38 years old.
- Hosting telemetry records AS16509, AMAZON-02 – Amazon.com, Inc., US.
- The site uses a DV TLS certificate issued by YE1, valid until 2026-11-15T14:22:01+00:00.
What to Verify Next
Before any commercial engagement, an independent corporate-registry check should confirm that the named business, physical address, and contracting entity correspond to an active legal organization. Any sector-specific registration or professional authorization relevant to the proposed research work should be confirmed directly with the applicable authority. Official contact channels should also be validated through an independent route, and sensitive information, credentials, or financial commitments should not be provided while the external detections remain unresolved.
- The homepage's principal commercial action is “Request a bid,” indicating that the expected interaction is a project inquiry rather than account access.
- Behavioral testing recorded two successful runs with no login form, hidden form, password-external form, wallet connection, or wallet-drainer activity.
- The supplied regulatory assessment records the operator identity as unverified and the on-page disclosure state as unclear.
Summary Verdict
The overall posture is critical, with a confirmed sensitive-interaction risk that outweighs the site's otherwise conventional corporate presentation. The available evidence does not support treating the website as a trusted business endpoint for credentials, confidential submissions, or financial commitments.
Infrastructure Integrity
The site is protected by a CDN/WAF layer, and all four observed addresses were identified as CDN edge servers; no origin-server candidate was observable. This provides a meaningful exposure-mitigation benefit, but edge infrastructure does not establish operator legitimacy and cannot offset the confirmed external threat detections.
Closing Assessment
The appropriate posture is passive review only until the external detections are independently resolved and the contracting entity is confirmed through authoritative channels; credentials and financial transactions should not be submitted.
Written analysis generated 2026-08-22 by the TrustSniffer Analysis Engine from the evidence in this report.
What the analysis found
2 findings contributed to this verdict, raised by registration and ownership, analysis engine, behaviour in a sandbox, external reputation.
01 Governance Risk
- Registration details are held behind a privacy service, so no operator is named publicly. This is common and legal, and it also means there is nobody to check.Registration and ownership
rule:KF_WHOIS_PRIVATE - The registration record withholds contact details for the operator.Registration and ownership
rule:KF_WHOIS_HIDDEN
02 Sensitive Interaction Risk
- The analysis matched a pattern TrustSniffer treats as a direct threat to a visitor.Analysis engine
signal:direct_threat - Most of what the page loaded came from other domains rather than from this one.Behaviour in a sandbox
rule:BEHAV_EXTERNAL_RATIO_HIGH - An external threat feed lists this domain: either Google Safe Browsing marked it malicious, or a significant number of malware engines flagged it.External reputation
rule:EXT_BLACKLIST_CRITICAL
Signals weighed against the site
- AbuseIPDB: 5 reports on hosting IP 31.43.160.6 (Framer B.V., Content Delivery Network), 9% confidence. The reports are attributed to shared infrastructure, not specifically to this website.
Identity verification
| Status | UNVERIFIED |
|---|---|
| Identity score | 30/100 |
| Identity verification confidence | 25% |
- 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 astarresearch.com.
- The request stayed on astarresearch.com. It was not redirected to another domain. Clear
- Registration is published under GoDaddy.com, LLC. Clear
- DNS for this domain is served by domaincontrol.com, across 2 name servers. Noted
- The registration is paid up to 2027-04-04. Noted
- The earliest public archive of this site is from 1999-11-28. Clear
- It is hosted on AMAZON-02, from a server in NL. Noted
Domain intelligence
| Registrar | GoDaddy.com, LLC |
|---|---|
| Hosting | AMAZON-02 - Amazon.com, Inc., US |
| Country | NL |
| Server IP | 31.43.160.6 |
| Name servers | NS77.DOMAINCONTROL.COM, NS78.DOMAINCONTROL.COM |
| SSL issuer | YE1 |
| SSL expiry | 2026-11-15 |
| Domain age | 2.38 years (continuous registration) |
| Domain expiry | 2027-04-04 |
| Archive first seen | 1999-11-28 |
| Archive snapshots | Not counted (archive lookup incomplete) |
| Reputation | VirusTotal: 15 flagged | AbuseIPDB: 9% confidence, 5 reports | Google Safe Browsing: 0 matches |
About this assessment
A trust score summarises the evidence TrustSniffer could collect about astarresearch.com 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.