Verdict
rspca.org.uk is moderately trusted.
Most signals looked ordinary, and some evidence was missing. Read the checks below before you pay or hand over personal details.
| What this site appears to be | Official charity site for the RSPCA (England & Wales). Provides donation flows, fundraising information, advice on animal welfare, pet rehoming, volunteering opportunities, and organizational information including financial breakdowns. |
|---|
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 | Not availableNo registration record was returned | Noted |
| Web archive | Never archivedNo public history of this site | Watch |
| Certificate | Encrypted connectionIssued by DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1 | Noted |
The page as captured
No screenshot is retained for this report.
Key findings
- Automated classification: Sensitive Interaction Risk.
- No flags from the reputation services TrustSniffer consulted at assessment time.
Full analysis
Overview
The website presents itself as the RSPCA’s England-and-Wales animal-welfare platform, offering animal-rescue information, pet rehoming, welfare advice, volunteering and fundraising opportunities, donation services, retail activity, and organizational information including financial breakdowns.
Scam/Impersonation Risk
No confirmed phishing, malicious-content, blacklist, or identity-contradiction indicators were observed. The homepage is materially aligned with the stated RSPCA charity model and contains extensive animal-welfare content, donation pathways, rehoming services, and fundraising information rather than an anomalous financial or investment proposition. A technical comparison produced a lookalike association with “ca.gov”; however, that association is not corroborated by the site’s RSPCA-specific content, domain presentation, linked social presence, or other observed behavior. Dynamic page changes and a standard login form were observed, but there were no hidden forms, external password submissions, wallet-drainer activity, cloaking, or suspicious inline scripts to indicate an attack mechanism.
- The homepage identifies the service as “The Largest Animal Welfare Charity in the UK” and provides animal-rescue, welfare, donation, rehoming, and fundraising content.
- The assessed domain returned 0 malicious detections and 0 suspicious detections across the evaluated external reputation checks.
- The homepage links to RSPCA-branded accounts on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and X; no confirmed impersonation finding was established.
- The observed interaction behavior recorded 0 wallet-connect runs, 0 wallet-sensitive runs, 0 wallet-drainer runs, 0 hidden forms, and 0 suspicious inline scripts.
Regulatory Verification Notes
The available pages describe a public-donation charity whose income includes regular gifts, legacy gifts, fundraising events, lottery or raffle activity, and retail sales. The site also provides organizational, governance, and financial information, which supports an evidence-consistent charitable operating model. The reviewed material does not clearly establish a formal charity registration reference or other independent registration identifier, so the operator’s legal status should be confirmed through the relevant official register; this is a transparency and verification matter, not evidence of a scam. The available third-party broker context produced no match, but that does not constitute a licensing or regulatory determination.
- The homepage and organizational sections provide “Who We Are,” governance, executive, history, and financial-information content.
- The stated business model is donation and charity funded, with no indication that users are promised financial returns.
- The site’s measured traffic ranking is 22938 and is within the top 1,000,000 domains.
- The page-authority assessment is in the mid band, providing supporting but non-determinative evidence of an established web presence.
What to Verify Next
Before a high-value donation or sensitive account action, the organization’s legal and charitable registration details should be matched against the applicable official register. Donation recipients, payment destinations, and receipt arrangements should be checked within the site’s own published flow, while contact channels should be confirmed through an independently sourced route. Account credentials should be unique to this service and payment protections should be reviewed before completing a material transaction.
- The legal and organizational pages contain information suitable for comparison with an official charity register.
- The donation flow and account functions create a basis for checking recipient, payment, and authentication details before use.
- The site publishes multiple organizational and social channels that can be cross-checked independently.
Summary Verdict
The website has a moderate-trust posture and appears consistent with an established animal-welfare charity, with no observed contradiction or active threat signal. Its identity is likely but not independently verified to a level that supports unconditional assurance for sensitive or high-value activity.
Infrastructure Integrity
The site is hosted on Google Cloud Platform infrastructure in the United States, with no CDN edge identified in the observed resolution. The transport certificate is organization-validated and issued by a mainstream certificate authority, providing a positive integrity signal for the encrypted connection but not independently proving the operator’s identity.
- Hosting infrastructure: AS396982, Google Cloud Platform — Google LLC, US.
- TLS certificate: DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1; OV validation; valid to 2026-11-23T23:59:59+00:00.
- Resolved infrastructure: 1 unique IP, 0 detected CDN edge IPs, and 1 likely origin IP.
Closing Assessment
Ordinary informational browsing is proportionate, while high-value donations, credential submission, and other sensitive actions should proceed only after the independent checks described above have been completed.
Written analysis generated 2026-08-13 by the TrustSniffer Analysis Engine from the evidence in this report.
What the analysis found
1 finding contributed to this verdict, raised by analysis engine, behaviour in a sandbox, page content.
01 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 - The page replaced a large part of its own content after loading.Behaviour in a sandbox
rule:BEHAV_DOM_CHANGE_HIGH - The page asks visitors for sensitive information.Page content
rule:PAGE_FORM_SENSITIVE - The page rewrote itself after it was interacted with, so what a visitor first sees is not what they end up on.Behaviour in a sandbox
rule:BEHAV_DOM_DIFF_AFTER_INTERACTION - The page presents itself as a brand TrustSniffer confirmed it does not belong to.Page content
rule:PAGE_BRAND_IMPERSONATION_CONFIRMED
Identity verification
| Status | LIKELY |
|---|---|
| Identity score | 79/100 |
| Identity verification confidence | 78% |
- Trusted social count=3
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 rspca.org.uk.
- The request stayed on rspca.org.uk. It was not redirected to another domain. Clear
- It is hosted on GOOGLE-CLOUD-PLATFORM, from a server in US. Noted
Domain intelligence
| Registrar | Not available |
|---|---|
| Hosting | GOOGLE-CLOUD-PLATFORM - Google LLC, US |
| Country | US |
| Server IP | 35.244.251.199 |
| Name servers | Not available |
| SSL issuer | DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1 |
| SSL expiry | 2026-11-23 |
| Domain age | Not available (no registration date was returned) |
| Domain expiry | Not available |
| 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 rspca.org.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.