Verdict
fao.org 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 | Official FAO homepage offering news, publications, data portals (FAOSTAT), interactive stories and resources about food, agriculture and nutrition. Institutional content for member countries, programs and transparency resources. |
|---|
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 | 33 years oldRegistered history | Clear |
| Web archive | Archived since 19962655 snapshots | Clear |
| Certificate | Encrypted connectionIssued by WE1 | 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 1996.
- No flags from the reputation services TrustSniffer consulted at assessment time.
Full analysis
Overview
The website is an informational and institutional platform for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, presenting news, publications, FAOSTAT data, country resources, technical material, and transparency information relating to food, agriculture, and nutrition. Its apparent model is public-service provision funded through member-state contributions, project funding, partnerships, and grants rather than direct commercial sales to visitors.
Scam/Impersonation Risk
No contradictions were observed: there were no phishing, impersonation, blacklist, malicious-reputation, or conflicting-identity indicators in the supplied evidence. The site's content, navigation, and institutional subject matter are consistent with an established international organization, while the real-world operator identity remains likely rather than independently verified. Automated interaction telemetry recorded two suspicious inline scripts, non-whitelisted external requests and posts, and console errors; these signals were implementation-level observations rather than evidence of credential harvesting or cloaking, since no login form, sensitive form, wallet behavior, clipboard activity, or external password submission was detected.
- The homepage is titled “Home | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations” and is classified as informational and organizational content without detected brand impersonation.
- The domain was registered in 1993 and is approximately 33.1 years old.
- The web archive records 2,655 snapshots spanning 1996–2025, with 30 years tracked.
- External reputation checks recorded 0 malicious detections, 0 suspicious detections, 0 abuse reports, and an established global traffic rank of 1768.
Regulatory Verification Notes
The About, FAO-and-UN, governing-body, worldwide-office, oversight, and transparency materials provide substantial institutional context and are consistent with the stated international-agency role. No commercial license, regulatory registration number, or regulated financial-service claim is presented in the supplied site content; this is a disclosure and verification consideration, not evidence of scam activity, particularly because the site presents an informational public-service model rather than a financial product. The available evidence supports an apparently legitimate established site, but does not independently prove the legal operator's identity.
- The About section provides links to the Director-General, organizational chart, governing bodies, worldwide offices, and FAO-and-UN information.
- The site includes a dedicated “Transparency and accountability” area and member-country resources.
- The domain is registered through Network Solutions, LLC.
- The site's TLS certificate is issued by WE1, uses DV validation, and is valid to 2026-11-08.
What to Verify Next
Before any credential or payment interaction, an enterprise or prospective user should confirm the organization's identity through an independent United Nations or FAO directory, validate that any contact route is reached through the established domain rather than an unsolicited message, and apply ordinary payment-protection and return-policy checks if a transaction is proposed. Any purported licensing or fundraising claim should be confirmed against the relevant official authority or the organization's independently sourced public documentation.
- The homepage exposes one search form and no sensitive form, login form, or untrusted form destination.
- The site's About, transparency, and member-country navigation provide specific institutional references suitable for independent cross-checking.
- The site links to established social and media platforms, including Facebook, X, Instagram, Spotify, Apple, and WeChat.
Summary Verdict
Available evidence is consistent with an established, apparently legitimate website and supports a high-trust, low-risk posture for its stated informational purpose. The classification is strong, while the connection between the website and a specific real-world operator remains likely rather than conclusively verified.
Infrastructure Integrity
The site is protected by Cloudflare CDN/WAF infrastructure, with observed service associated with AS13335; the deployment includes CDN edge addresses and additional infrastructure addresses, including AS16509, with one potential origin candidate. This arrangement mitigates direct exposure of the service infrastructure, although protective hosting is a supporting control rather than proof of legitimacy.
Closing Assessment
Normal informational use is proportionate to the available evidence; credentials or payments should be preceded by independent confirmation of organizational identity and the applicable transaction protections.
Written analysis generated 2026-08-13 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 | LIKELY |
|---|---|
| Identity score | 76/100 |
| Identity verification confidence | 76% |
- Trusted social count=2
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 fao.org.
- The request stayed on fao.org. It was not redirected to another domain. Clear
- Registration is published under Network Solutions, LLC. Clear
- DNS for this domain is served by awsdns-33.org, across 4 name servers. Noted
- The registration is paid up to 2034-07-13. Clear
- The earliest public archive of this site is from 1996-10-18. Clear
- It is hosted on CLOUDFLARENET, from a server in US. Noted
Domain intelligence
| Registrar | Network Solutions, LLC |
|---|---|
| Hosting | CLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US |
| Country | US |
| Server IP | 2606:4700::6812:b29 |
| Name servers | ns-1289.awsdns-33.org, ns-1022.awsdns-63.net, ns-120.awsdns-15.com, ns-1878.awsdns-42.co.uk |
| SSL issuer | WE1 |
| SSL expiry | 2026-11-08 |
| Domain age | 33.10 years (continuous registration) |
| Domain expiry | 2034-07-13 |
| Archive first seen | 1996-10-18 |
| Archive snapshots | 2655 |
| 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 fao.org 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.