Verdict
curtisgunite.co.za 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 | Local South African gunite/sprayed concrete specialist (Curtis Gunite) offering pool and sprayed concrete services. Page contains company overview, benefits of gunite, contact details (phone and email) and navigation to About/Services/Work/Contact. No forms or financial solicitations detected. |
|---|
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 | 9 flagged itVirusTotal | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Google Safe Browsing | Not listedGoogle | Clear |
| Abuse reports on the host | 19% confidenceAbuseIPDB, 10 reports; shared hosting inflates reports | Clear |
| Domain age | 17 years oldRegistered history | Clear |
| Web archive | Archived since 2012549 snapshots | Clear |
| Certificate | Encrypted connectionIssued by YR2 | Noted |
The page as captured
Key findings
- Automated classification: Sensitive Interaction Risk.
- Domain age: more than 10 years (registration continuity).
- Public web-archive history exists since 2012.
- At least one reputation service TrustSniffer consulted had flagged this domain at assessment time.
Full analysis
Security Alert
Fortinet, Sophos flagged this site in external intelligence checks, indicating elevated compromise/scam exposure that requires immediate caution.
Curtis Gunite is a South African local-services website presenting Curtis Gunite as a specialist contractor for gunite pools and sprayed-concrete applications, including exteriors, interiors, moats, ponds, lakes, and zoo compounds, with enquiries directed through published contact channels.
Scam/Impersonation Risk
The website content presents a coherent local-contractor model, with service descriptions, company history, navigation to About, Services, Our Work, and Contact pages, and no observed login flow, payment interface, financial solicitation, or page-level impersonation indicators. However, this benign presentation is outweighed by a confirmed blacklist finding and multiple external malicious or suspicious detections associated with the assessed website. Abuse reports also exist for the shared hosting IP; because those reports apply to shared infrastructure, they are a contextual signal rather than proof that the contractor itself generated the reported activity. The domain and archival record indicate continuity rather than an obviously recent creation or suspicious repurposing, but that positive provenance does not neutralize the external threat findings. No competing legal-entity names were observed across the reviewed pages.
- Domain registration: 2009-05-27T10:25:17Z; age 17.25 years; expiration 2027-05-27T10:25:17Z.
- Web archive: 549 snapshots, spanning 2012-04-02T21:21:26Z to 2026-02-23T01:38:30Z, across 15 tracked years.
- External reputation assessment: 9 malicious detections, 2 suspicious detections, and a confirmed blacklist finding; the Google Safe Browsing result was false.
- Shared hosting IP reputation: 10 abuse reports, confidence score 19, attributed to shared infrastructure and classified as Data Center/Web Hosting/Transit.
Regulatory Verification Notes
The About page states that Curtis Gunite commenced trading in 1973 and describes a specialist crew serving engineering specifications, while the site’s stated business model is ordinary contracting rather than a financial service. The available pages do not disclose a licence, registration number, or independently verifiable legal-entity identifier. This is a regulatory and commercial-transparency gap, not by itself evidence of a scam, but it prevents independent confirmation of the operator’s legal identity. The domain is registered through Absolute Hosting, and its transport encryption is valid; these are infrastructure and continuity indicators, not proof of corporate identity or regulatory standing. No match was returned in the reviewed broker-reputation dataset.
- About page: states that Curtis Gunite commenced trading in 1973 and identifies the business as a specialist gunite company.
- Legal and identity disclosure: the reviewed About, Services, and Contact navigation does not provide a licence or registration number.
- Domain registration: registrar listed as Absolute Hosting.
- TLS certificate: issuer YR2, Domain Validation (DV), valid to 2026-09-23.
What to Verify Next
Before any commercial engagement, an independent counterparty check should match the Curtis Gunite trading identity, responsible legal entity, and applicable South African business records. Any quotation, bank-account instruction, or contract should be validated through contact details obtained independently of the website, and payment terms should use protections appropriate to a construction engagement rather than relying solely on an emailed instruction.
- About page: provides the business-history claim that should be reconciled against independent registry and contracting records.
- Contact page: provides the communication endpoint that should be compared with independently sourced business information.
- Services and Contact pages: support a contract-and-quotation workflow, making counterparty and payment-instruction validation the relevant pre-engagement checks.
Summary Verdict
The overall posture is critical and unsuitable for sensitive interaction. The site’s plausible contractor presentation and established technical history do not overcome the confirmed external threat and blacklist findings, while the real-world operator remains unverified.
Infrastructure Integrity
The website is protected by a CDN/WAF layer, and the observed address was an edge address rather than an independently confirmed origin. The infrastructure resolves to Hetzner Online GmbH in Germany; this provides some exposure mitigation, but protective hosting infrastructure cannot establish legitimacy or offset the external reputation findings.
- Hosting infrastructure: served from AS24940 (HETZNER-AS – Hetzner Online GmbH, DE); one observed edge IP, 94.130.136.126.
- CDN/WAF posture: CDN protection detected; no likely origin IP candidate was identified.
Closing Assessment
Public reading may be limited to non-sensitive review, but login, credential submission, financial transactions, and reliance on unverified payment instructions should not proceed unless the external security findings are resolved and the counterparty is independently confirmed.
Written analysis generated 2026-08-22 by the TrustSniffer Analysis Engine from the evidence in this report.
What the analysis found
1 finding contributed to this verdict, raised by analysis engine, behaviour in a sandbox, external reputation.
01 Sensitive Interaction Risk
- The analysis matched a pattern TrustSniffer treats as a direct threat to a visitor.Analysis engine
signal:direct_threat - The structure of the page changed sharply while it was loading.Behaviour in a sandbox
rule:BEHAV_DOM_DENSITY_SPIKE - The page carried inline scripts written in a style TrustSniffer treats as suspicious.Behaviour in a sandbox
rule:BEHAV_SUSPICIOUS_INLINE_SCRIPTS - 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: 10 reports on hosting IP 94.130.136.126 (Hetzner Online GmbH, Data Center/Web Hosting/Transit), 19% confidence. The reports are attributed to shared infrastructure, not specifically to this website.
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 curtisgunite.co.za.
- The request stayed on curtisgunite.co.za. It was not redirected to another domain. Clear
- Registration is published under Absolute Hosting. Clear
- DNS for this domain is served by servconfig.com, across 2 name servers. Noted
- The registration is paid up to 2027-05-27. Noted
- The earliest public archive of this site is from 2012-04-02. Clear
- It is hosted on HETZNER-AS, from a server in DE. Noted
Domain intelligence
| Registrar | Absolute Hosting |
|---|---|
| Hosting | HETZNER-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE |
| Country | DE |
| Server IP | 94.130.136.126 |
| Name servers | ns1.servconfig.com, ns2.servconfig.com |
| SSL issuer | YR2 |
| SSL expiry | 2026-09-23 |
| Domain age | 17.25 years (continuous registration) |
| Domain expiry | 2027-05-27 |
| Archive first seen | 2012-04-02 |
| Archive snapshots | 549 |
| Reputation | VirusTotal: 9 flagged | AbuseIPDB: 19% confidence, 10 reports | Google Safe Browsing: 0 matches |
About this assessment
A trust score summarises the evidence TrustSniffer could collect about curtisgunite.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.