Verdict
usa.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 USA.gov landing page that helps users locate and understand government benefits, programs, and services. Provides navigation to topics, contact phone number, and guidance on secure .gov usage. |
|---|
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 | 27 years oldRegistered history | Clear |
| Web archive | Archived since 19995000 snapshots | Clear |
| Certificate | Encrypted connectionIssued by YR1 | 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 1999.
- No flags from the reputation services TrustSniffer consulted at assessment time.
Full analysis
Overview
USA.gov is a public-service information portal that helps visitors locate and understand U.S. government benefits, programs, and services, including assistance related to passports, taxes, voting, health, housing, employment, and other civic matters; its apparent business model is informational rather than commercial, with no direct deposits or transactions requested.
Scam/Impersonation Risk
No phishing, impersonation, blacklist, or conflicting-identity indicators were observed. The homepage presents a coherent government-service purpose, identifies itself as an official U.S. government website, provides guidance on secure .gov usage, and does not present a login form, sensitive data form, wallet interaction, or payment request. Available evidence is therefore consistent with an established, apparently legitimate public-service website, although the real-world operator identity is not independently verified by this assessment.
- The homepage describes USA.gov as a service for locating government benefits, programs, and information and contains no reported red flags.
- The domain was registered on 1999-08-18 and is approximately 27 years old.
- Historical records contain 5,000 snapshots spanning 1999-12-17 to 2013-10-01, covering 15 years.
- External checks recorded 0 malicious detections, 0 suspicious detections, and no reported abuse activity.
Regulatory Verification Notes
The homepage makes a public-service government affiliation claim rather than offering a regulated financial or commercial product. No commercial license or registration number is claimed, which is consistent with the stated informational purpose and is not, by itself, evidence of misconduct. The available content identifies government topics, contact information, and service-navigation functions, but independent confirmation of the real-world operator remains outside the evidence supplied. The strong domain continuity, established public reach, clean external reputation, and coherent page purpose support the site's apparent legitimacy; the absence of a commercial transaction model means ordinary merchant disclosures such as returns or payment terms are not applicable to the homepage's stated function.
- The homepage is categorized as an informational government/public-service portal and states that it helps users find government services.
- The registration record lists get.gov as the registrar.
- The site is served through AS14618, AMAZON-AES - Amazon.com, Inc., US.
- The transport certificate is issued by YR1, uses domain validation (DV), and is valid until 2026-10-18T12:57:53+00:00.
What to Verify Next
Before credential submission or following links to an external agency service, independently confirm that the destination belongs to the intended government organization and that the requested information is proportionate to the stated service. Where a transaction or account action occurs on a linked service rather than on the portal itself, confirm the responsible agency, privacy terms, and available payment protections through an independently obtained government contact route. The published 1-844-USAGOV1 contact channel may be used as one point of comparison, while independent confirmation remains appropriate because operator identity has not been independently verified here.
- The homepage provides the 1-844-USAGOV1 telephone contact and navigation to government benefits, taxes, immigration, voting, and other services.
- The page analysis found 0 login forms, 0 sensitive forms, and no untrusted form destination.
- The stated business model involves no direct commercial transactions or user deposits.
Summary Verdict
The overall posture is high trust and low risk, with the evidence strongly consistent with an established, apparently legitimate government information service. No contradictory risk signals were observed, but the available evidence does not independently prove the real-world operator identity.
Infrastructure Integrity
The website is protected by AWS CDN/WAF infrastructure, and the observed IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are AWS edge addresses rather than identified origin systems. This is a mitigating security-control signal that reduces direct origin exposure, but it is not proof of legitimacy.
Closing Assessment
Ordinary informational use is proportionate; credential or payment interactions should remain limited to the intended government service after the responsible agency and destination have been independently confirmed.
Written analysis generated 2026-08-11 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 usa.gov.
- The request stayed on usa.gov. It was not redirected to another domain. Clear
- Registration is published under get.gov. Clear
- DNS for this domain is served by gsa.gov, across 5 name servers. Noted
- The registration is paid up to 2027-08-18. Noted
- The earliest public archive of this site is from 1999-12-17. Clear
- It is hosted on AMAZON-AES, from a server in US. Noted
Domain intelligence
| Registrar | get.gov |
|---|---|
| Hosting | AMAZON-AES - Amazon.com, Inc., US |
| Country | US |
| Server IP | 2600:1f18:f88:4313:6df7:f986:f915:78d6 |
| Name servers | dns.gsa.gov, dns2.gsa.gov, dns3.gsa.gov, dns4.gsa.gov, dns5.gsa.gov |
| SSL issuer | YR1 |
| SSL expiry | 2026-10-18 |
| Domain age | 27.00 years (continuous registration) |
| Domain expiry | 2027-08-18 |
| Archive first seen | 1999-12-17 |
| 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 usa.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.