Verdict
frontiersin.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 | Frontiers publisher site: information about open-access journals, author resources, submission processes, news and organizational information. Contains newsletter subscription and cookie consent interactions. |
|---|
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 | 21 years oldRegistered history | Clear |
| Web archive | Never archivedNo public history of this site | Watch |
| Certificate | Encrypted connectionIssued by Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2 | Noted |
The page as captured
Key findings
- Automated classification: Not Scam.
- Domain age: more than 10 years (registration continuity).
- No flags from the reputation services TrustSniffer consulted at assessment time.
- The operator behind the site could not be independently connected to a real-world brand or person.
Full analysis
Overview
This website is Frontiers, an established academic publishing platform presenting open-access journals, peer-reviewed research, author and editor resources, submission services, research-integrity information, scientific news, and organizational material. Its apparent business model is to support scholarly publishing through article processing charges, institutional memberships, and publishing services for authors and societies.
Scam/Impersonation Risk
No contradictions were observed. The homepage presents a coherent academic-publishing identity, with content covering journals, peer review, author services, research topics, institutional partnerships, and publishing policies; the supplied page findings contain no phishing, impersonation, malicious-content, or other fraud indicators. Browser telemetry did include non-whitelisted external requests and console errors, but this did not coincide with hidden forms, externally submitted password forms, wallet activity, clipboard manipulation, cloaking, or other abuse behavior. The available evidence is therefore consistent with an established, apparently legitimate website, while independently verified operator identity remains unresolved.
- The homepage identifies Frontiers as a publisher of peer-reviewed articles in open-access journals and provides academic-publishing navigation including journals, manuscript submission, peer review, research integrity, and author resources.
- The homepage contained no detected red flags, malicious behavior indicators, hidden forms, or sensitive external form submissions.
- Browser telemetry recorded 30 external XHR requests, 18 external POST requests, 18 non-whitelisted external requests overall, and 8 console errors; no wallet, clipboard, cloaking, or password-exfiltration behavior was detected.
- External reputation checks found no malicious or suspicious classification, and the domain appeared within the established global traffic population.
Regulatory Verification Notes
The site’s apparent function is scholarly publishing rather than a financial or otherwise third-party-regulated service. Its navigation exposes organizational and publishing-policy areas, but the supplied evidence does not independently verify the real-world operator behind the site. No regulatory license or registration number is presented in the supplied page material; this is a disclosure point for ordinary due diligence, not evidence of a scam. The domain and transport infrastructure provide affirmative establishment signals: it is a long-established registration using GoDaddy.com, LLC, and the site uses a valid domain-validated certificate issued by Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2.
- Domain registered 2006-02-11T18:19:36Z; age 20.52 years; registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC.
- Served from AS8075 (MICROSOFT-CORP-MSN-AS-BLOCK - Microsoft Corporation, US).
- TLS certificate issued by Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2 (DV), valid to 2026-11-28T11:25:42+00:00.
- The supplied page material describes open-access publishing, article processing charges, institutional memberships, and services for authors and societies, without presenting a financial-services license.
What to Verify Next
Before credential or payment interactions, an interested institution or author should independently confirm the publisher’s legal identity through authoritative academic or corporate sources, reconcile the relevant contact and organizational details, and review the applicable fee, cancellation, refund, and payment-protection terms. Where a regulated service is expected by the specific transaction, the relevant licensing registry should also be checked directly.
- The site navigation exposes About, History, Leadership, Contact, Publishing Model, Open Access, and Fee Policy areas suitable for independent cross-checking.
- The stated business model includes article processing charges and institutional memberships, making fee and payment terms the most relevant transaction checks.
- The site offers newsletter subscription and cookie-consent interactions but no sensitive form was identified in the supplied capture.
Summary Verdict
Available evidence supports a high-trust posture and is consistent with an established, apparently legitimate academic publisher. No scam, phishing, impersonation, or other contradictory signal was identified, although the real-world operator identity is not independently verified.
Infrastructure Integrity
The website is protected by a CDN/WAF arrangement, with the observed edge address hosted on AS8075 by Microsoft Corporation and no origin candidate exposed in the analysis. This infrastructure reduces direct origin exposure and is a mitigating control, but it is not, by itself, proof of legitimacy.
Closing Assessment
Normal browsing and ordinary scholarly interaction are proportionate; before submitting credentials or making payments, independent checks of the merchant identity, applicable terms, and available payment protections should be completed.
Written analysis generated 2026-08-17 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 frontiersin.org.
- The request stayed on frontiersin.org. It was not redirected to another domain. Clear
- Registration is published under GoDaddy.com, LLC. Clear
- DNS for this domain is served by azure-dns.org, across 4 name servers. Noted
- The registration is paid up to 2027-02-11. Noted
- It is hosted on MICROSOFT-CORP-MSN-AS-BLOCK, from a server in US. Noted
Domain intelligence
| Registrar | GoDaddy.com, LLC |
|---|---|
| Hosting | MICROSOFT-CORP-MSN-AS-BLOCK - Microsoft Corporation, US |
| Country | US |
| Server IP | 2620:1ec:46::53 |
| Name servers | ns3-38.azure-dns.org, ns1-38.azure-dns.com, ns2-38.azure-dns.net, ns4-38.azure-dns.info |
| SSL issuer | Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2 |
| SSL expiry | 2026-11-28 |
| Domain age | 20.52 years (continuous registration) |
| Domain expiry | 2027-02-11 |
| Archive first seen | Not available |
| Archive snapshots | 0 |
| 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 frontiersin.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.