Verdict
ftc.gov 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 Federal Trade Commission site offering consumer guidance, enforcement news, policy materials, and resources to report fraud and obtain refunds. |
|---|
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 | 29 years oldRegistered history | Clear |
| Web archive | Archived since 19975000 snapshots | Clear |
| Certificate | Encrypted connectionIssued by GeoTrust TLS RSA CA G1 | 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 1997.
- No flags from the reputation services TrustSniffer consulted at assessment time.
Full analysis
Overview
The website is the official Federal Trade Commission public-service portal, presenting consumer-protection guidance, enforcement news, policy and legal materials, fraud-reporting resources, refund information, and advice for businesses. Its apparent purpose is governmental education, enforcement, and assistance rather than commercial sales or monetized financial activity.
Scam/Impersonation Risk
No blacklist, phishing, malware, impersonation, or conflicting-identity contradictions were observed. The homepage identifies itself as the Federal Trade Commission and displays standard U.S. government authenticity guidance, while its content is coherent with a federal consumer-protection agency: enforcement actions, legal resources, fraud reporting, and refund programs. External reputation checks were clean, with no malicious or suspicious detections and no reported abuse associated with the observed hosting address. The available evidence is therefore consistent with an established, apparently legitimate website, although the real-world operator identity is not independently verified.
- The homepage is titled “Federal Trade Commission | Protecting America’s Consumers” and states that it is an official U.S. government website.
- The domain was registered on 1997-10-02 and is approximately 28.88 years old.
- The site has 5,000 archive snapshots spanning 1997–2016, with 20 years tracked.
- External checks recorded 0 malicious detections, 0 suspicious detections, and no blacklist hit.
Regulatory Verification Notes
The site presents a government-agency business model rather than a commercial service requiring financial licensing. Its published material covers consumer protection, enforcement, legal resources, rulemaking, and fraud reporting; no separate third-party regulated status or commercial license claim is established by the supplied evidence. The identity presentation is strong at the page level, but independent linkage between the website and a real-world operator remains unverified. The absence of a separate commercial licensing disclosure is therefore not a scam indicator in this context, but any externally linked service should be assessed on its own legal and regulatory merits.
- The homepage describes enforcement of federal competition and consumer-protection laws and provides access to the Legal Library.
- The site is served from AS16625, identified as AKAMAI-AS – Akamai Technologies, Inc., US.
- The transport certificate is OV-validated, issued by GeoTrust TLS RSA CA G1 for Federal Trade Commission, and valid through 2027-02-08.
- The site's stated business model is U.S. federal consumer-protection and public-service activity, with monetization not applicable.
What to Verify Next
Before credential or payment interactions involving any third-party destination reached through the site, independently confirm the destination’s legal identity, applicable licensing, privacy terms, return or refund conditions, and payment-protection arrangements. Official contact channels and any linked program should be confirmed through an independent government source or an offline institutional contact route rather than relying solely on an embedded link.
- The homepage provides public resources to report fraud, submit comments, search legal materials, and access refund programs.
- Page analysis found no login form, sensitive form, hidden form, or untrusted form destination.
- Observed browser behavior recorded no external posts, no external XHR or fetch activity, and no wallet-related activity.
Summary Verdict
The overall posture is high trust and low risk. Available evidence is consistent with an established, apparently legitimate government information service, with strong historical continuity, coherent institutional content, and clean threat indicators. The site should not be treated as independently proving the identity of every operator or destination associated with linked services.
Infrastructure Integrity
The site is protected by Akamai CDN/WAF infrastructure, and observed addresses were CDN edge servers rather than an exposed origin server. This configuration is a mitigating control that reduces direct origin exposure and supports infrastructure resilience, but it is not, by itself, proof of legitimacy.
Closing Assessment
Normal informational use is proportionate to the available evidence; credential or payment activity involving linked third parties should remain subject to independent identity, policy, and payment-protection checks.
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 | UNVERIFIED |
|---|---|
| Identity score | 55/100 |
| Identity verification confidence | 30% |
- Identity verified on page
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 ftc.gov.
- The request stayed on ftc.gov. It was not redirected to another domain. Clear
- Registration is published under get.gov. Clear
- DNS for this domain is served by akam.net, across 6 name servers. Noted
- The registration is paid up to 2027-07-07. Noted
- The earliest public archive of this site is from 1997-06-14. Clear
- It is hosted on AKAMAI-AS, from a server in US. Noted
Domain intelligence
| Registrar | get.gov |
|---|---|
| Hosting | AKAMAI-AS - Akamai Technologies, Inc., US |
| Country | US |
| Server IP | 2a02:26f0:e80:58e::2031 |
| Name servers | a1-252.akam.net, a24-67.akam.net, a26-64.akam.net, a3-65.akam.net, a6-66.akam.net, a7-67.akam.net |
| SSL issuer | GeoTrust TLS RSA CA G1 |
| SSL expiry | 2027-02-08 |
| Domain age | 29.16 years (continuous registration) |
| Domain expiry | 2027-07-07 |
| Archive first seen | 1997-06-14 |
| Archive snapshots | 5000 |
| 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 ftc.gov 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.