Verdict
port.ac.uk 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 University of Portsmouth Clearing page offering course search, international student guidance, admissions steps, and campus contact information. Contains cookie consent and embedded video notices; no forms requesting sensitive financial or credential data are present on the captured content. |
|---|
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 19974645 snapshots | Clear |
| Certificate | Encrypted connectionIssued by YE1 | 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
This website is an academic admissions and information service presenting University of Portsmouth Clearing, course-search resources, international-student guidance, admissions steps, campus services, and institutional contact information. Its apparent purpose is to support prospective students rather than conduct direct consumer sales, with operations associated with enrolments, tuition, and university services.
Scam/Impersonation Risk
No confirmed phishing, impersonation, or conflicting identity signals were observed. The Clearing page consistently presents university admissions content, contains no login or sensitive-data form, and shows no crypto, wallet, or other abuse-oriented mechanisms. One automated similarity signal referenced t.me, but that signal is not corroborated by the page's institutional content, behavioral observations, or external reputation results. The contact and content presentation therefore appear consistent with an established academic information site, although the real-world operator identity is not independently verified.
- The homepage/Clearing page is titled “University of Portsmouth - Clearing | University of Portsmouth” and provides course listings, admissions support, international-student guidance, and campus contact information.
- The captured page contained 0 forms, no login form, no hidden forms, and no sensitive-data request.
- External reputation checks recorded 0 malicious and 0 suspicious results; the domain was ranked 24530 and was within the top 1 million.
- Domain registration continuity dates to 1997, making the domain 29.23 years old; archive records contain 4645 snapshots spanning 1997–2026, with 30 years tracked.
Regulatory Verification Notes
The available content is consistent with a university admissions website and includes institutional navigation covering governance, faculties, facilities, contact information, and student services. No licensing or registration number is disclosed on the captured page; this is a transparency item for institutional verification, not evidence of a scam. The apparent institutional identity is supported by the page content and long-running web presence, but it should not be treated as independently proven. No matching broker-reputation record was identified.
- The site navigation includes “About us,” “Structure and governance,” “Our faculties,” “Our facilities,” “Contact us,” and admissions-related services.
- The observed network endpoint was served through AS13335, CLOUDFLARENET – Cloudflare, Inc., US.
- The transport certificate uses issuer YE1, provides DV validation, and is valid to 2026-09-16T09:52:02+00:00.
- The captured page describes operations through university courses, admissions, enrolments, tuition, and institutional services rather than direct consumer trading.
What to Verify Next
Before credential or payment interactions, independently confirm that the relevant admissions or payment destination is linked to the institution through an established offline or independently sourced contact route. Confirm the applicable fee, refund, and payment-protection terms through official institutional channels, particularly if an application or payment process moves beyond the captured informational page.
- The available identity linkage is page-based and has not been independently verified.
- The captured content is informational and does not itself request sensitive credentials or financial information.
- The page provides institutional contact and admissions-navigation areas that can be used as reference points for independent confirmation.
Summary Verdict
The overall posture is high trust and low risk. Available evidence is consistent with an established, apparently legitimate academic website, with no observed contradiction indicating scam or impersonation activity. The assessment supports ordinary use while retaining a qualification around independent operator-identity verification.
Infrastructure Integrity
The site benefits from protective CDN/WAF infrastructure, which mitigates direct exposure of the origin and improves delivery resilience; this is a security control rather than proof of legitimacy. The observed infrastructure record identifies Amazon CDN/WAF delivery on AS16509, with one observed edge address and no origin candidate identified.
- Infrastructure is identified as AMAZON-02 – Amazon.com, Inc., US, on AS16509.
- One CDN edge IP was observed: 3.248.71.106.
- The infrastructure record reports 1 unique IP, 1 edge IP, and 0 likely origin IPs.
Closing Assessment
Routine informational use is appropriate; before submitting credentials or making a payment, ordinary independent checks of institutional identity, applicable terms, and payment protections should be completed.
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 | 60% |
- 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 port.ac.uk.
- The request stayed on port.ac.uk. It was not redirected to another domain. Clear
- The earliest public archive of this site is from 1997-05-18. Clear
- It is hosted on CLOUDFLARENET, from a server in US. Noted
Domain intelligence
| Registrar | Not available |
|---|---|
| Hosting | CLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US |
| Country | US |
| Server IP | 2606:4700::6812:10f8 |
| Name servers | Not available |
| SSL issuer | YE1 |
| SSL expiry | 2026-09-16 |
| Domain age | 29.23 years (continuous registration) |
| Domain expiry | Not available |
| Archive first seen | 1997-05-18 |
| Archive snapshots | 4645 |
| 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 port.ac.uk 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.