Verdict
derekthornton.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 | Personal real estate agent website for Derek Thornton (EXP Realty) featuring biography, services (buying/selling, market analysis, staging, investment guidance), local listings, multiple testimonials, and a contact form with address and phone number. |
|---|
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 | 6 flagged itVirusTotal | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Google Safe Browsing | Not listedGoogle | Clear |
| Abuse reports on the host | 0 reportsAbuseIPDB; shared hosting inflates this count | Noted |
| Domain age | 19 years oldRegistered history | Clear |
| Web archive | Archived since 2004Public history exists | 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 2004.
- At least one reputation service TrustSniffer consulted had flagged this domain at assessment time.
Full analysis
Overview
Derek Thornton’s personal real estate website presents Derek Thornton Personal Real Estate Corporation and its stated EXP Realty affiliation, offering residential buying and selling services, market analysis, staging, investment guidance, local property listings, testimonials, and a contact form intended to generate client enquiries and commission-based property transactions.
Scam/Impersonation Risk
The site’s ordinary real-estate presentation contains no detected on-page phishing, login, wallet, or brand-impersonation indicators, and its content is consistent with a local agent business. However, this benign presentation is materially contradicted by confirmed blacklist status and multiple external threat-intelligence detections, including six malicious and two suspicious classifications. The site therefore presents a high risk for sensitive interaction, despite its professional appearance. Identity verification remains unverified, so the on-site association with Derek Thornton and EXP Realty should not be treated as independently proven.
- Homepage: identifies Derek Thornton Personal Real Estate Corporation, Derek Thornton PREC*, and EXP Realty while presenting residential real-estate services.
- External reputation assessment: six malicious and two suspicious detections were recorded, with the domain also appearing on multiple external blacklist sources.
- Historical domain records: first recorded on 2004-03-20 and last recorded on 2026-05-21, with 23 years tracked and a historical continuity score of 0.913.
Regulatory Verification Notes
The legal and identity presentation names Derek Thornton and EXP Realty, but the available evidence does not independently establish the relationship between the individual, the corporate designation, and the brokerage. The site does not state a licence number or identify a licensing authority, creating a regulatory-disclosure gap for a business involved in property transactions. This is a verification issue rather than a standalone finding of fraud. The domain itself is long-established and registered through Register.ca Inc., but that administrative history does not validate the site’s current operator or the external threat detections.
- About page: states that Derek Thornton has worked in real estate since 2013 and identifies the business as Derek Thornton Personal Real Estate Corporation, EXP Realty.
- Legal and identity presentation: no licence number or licensing authority is stated in the supplied site content.
- Registration record: registered 2007-06-26 (~19.17 years old) through Register.ca Inc.; expiry 2027-06-26.
What to Verify Next
Before any sensitive exchange, independently confirm the agent’s current affiliation through the brokerage’s official directory and confirm the applicable licence and corporate status with the relevant real-estate regulator. Validate the property listings and transaction instructions through an independently obtained brokerage contact channel rather than relying solely on details reached through the site. Until those checks are complete, sensitive personal information, credentials, deposits, and transaction funds should not be submitted through the website.
- About page: provides the individual and brokerage names that should be matched against independent brokerage records.
- Services and listings pages: describe the transaction and property activities requiring confirmation with the relevant regulator and brokerage.
- Contact page: provides the site’s stated engagement route, which should be cross-checked through an independently sourced channel.
Summary Verdict
The overall posture is critical trust risk, with a sensitive-interaction risk that is not compatible with routine reliance for credentials, personal information, or financial transactions. The site’s credible local-business presentation does not overcome the confirmed external reputation contradictions, and the real-world operator relationship remains unverified.
Infrastructure Integrity
The site resolves directly to infrastructure operated by FIBERHUB - VegasNAP, LLC in the United States, with no detected CDN or WAF layer and a visible hosting origin. Transport encryption is present, but it uses domain validation only; these controls provide baseline technical protection and are not evidence of legitimacy. Unconfirmed DNS heuristics indicated fast-flux-like characteristics and a geographic registry mismatch, which add infrastructure uncertainty but are subordinate to the confirmed external reputation issue.
- Hosting infrastructure: served from AS53340 (FIBERHUB - VegasNAP, LLC, US), IP address 162.251.236.84.
- TLS certificate: issued by YR2, domain validation (DV), valid to 2026-10-02T04:42:39+00:00.
- Network posture: one resolved IP, zero edge IPs, one likely origin IP, and no CDN detected.
Closing Assessment
The appropriate institutional posture is to suspend sensitive interaction until the brokerage relationship, licensing, listing authority, and transaction channels have been independently validated; any engagement should remain limited to non-sensitive review during that process.
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
- The registration record withholds contact details for the operator.Registration and ownership
rule:KF_WHOIS_HIDDEN - 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
02 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 - 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
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 derekthornton.com.
- The request stayed on derekthornton.com. It was not redirected to another domain. Clear
- Registration is published under Register.ca Inc. Clear
- DNS for this domain is served by sectionthirtysix.com, across 2 name servers. Noted
- The registration is paid up to 2027-06-26. Noted
- The earliest public archive of this site is from 2004-03-20. Clear
- It is hosted on FIBERHUB, from a server in US. Noted
Domain intelligence
| Registrar | Register.ca Inc |
|---|---|
| Hosting | FIBERHUB - VegasNAP, LLC, US |
| Country | US |
| Server IP | 162.251.236.84 |
| Name servers | NS1.SECTIONTHIRTYSIX.COM, NS2.SECTIONTHIRTYSIX.COM |
| SSL issuer | YR2 |
| SSL expiry | 2026-10-02 |
| Domain age | 19.17 years (continuous registration) |
| Domain expiry | 2027-06-26 |
| Archive first seen | 2004-03-20 |
| Archive snapshots | Not counted (archive lookup incomplete) |
| Reputation | VirusTotal: 6 flagged | AbuseIPDB: 0 reports | Google Safe Browsing: 0 matches |
About this assessment
A trust score summarises the evidence TrustSniffer could collect about derekthornton.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.