Trust Score
The Trust Score is a single number from 0 to 100 that summarises how risky a website is. Higher scores indicate fewer or smaller penalties in the available data, not a guarantee of safety.
Score bands
| Range | Label | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 85-100 | Minimal Risk | Few or no net penalties in the available checks |
| 70-84 | Low Risk | Relatively few net penalties; inspect individual findings |
| 45-69 | Moderate | Mixed signals, verify before trusting |
| 25-44 | Elevated Risk | Significant net penalties; inspect the findings |
| 0-24 | High Risk | Strong scam or malware signals |
The colour band on a scan page (green → blue → yellow → orange → red) follows these exact thresholds.
How it's built
The current model is version 4.0. It starts at 100 and applies triggered penalties, bonuses and any recorded manual adjustments. Its calculated result is bounded between 1 and 100; the display scale spans 0 to 100.
Only the highest triggered tier in each chain is counted. The largest penalty applies at full weight. Later penalties have progressively lower weights, adjusted for their tier, so adding the raw badge values does not reproduce the final score. Bonuses apply at full weight. The result is rounded and bounded to the score range.
The 14 penalty chains represent different types of findings, but their sources are not necessarily independent. A severe single finding can be enough to produce a low score. A missing check is not a passed check.
The 14 penalty chains
| Chain | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Antivirus | Detections across multiple engines |
| Blacklists | Google Safe Browsing, Cloudflare and community phishing feeds |
| Regulatory | Public warnings from financial regulators |
| Domain Age | How recently the domain was registered |
| Scam Farm | Code-sharing connections counted by the engine; inspect the graph before inferring ownership or fraud |
| SSL | Certificate validity, expiry, presence |
| Cookie Security | Cookie flags (Secure, HttpOnly, SameSite) |
| Server Location | Hosting in a high-risk jurisdiction |
| Community | A numeric community rating, when supplied to scoring |
| WHOIS | Ownership hidden behind privacy services |
| Risky Category | Site classified into a high-risk vertical |
| Network Threats | Captured connections to countries classified as high-risk by the model |
| Malicious Requests | Abnormal failed-request patterns |
| Site Status | Parked or unreachable website |
Bonus chains
Two chains add points instead of subtracting:
- Domain Veteran: a long, clean history adds confidence
- Community Trust: a positive numeric community rating, when supplied; the highest tier also requires a review count
Bonuses can raise the final score. Read severe individual findings even when the overall band is higher. Publishing a narrative community report does not by itself mean a numeric rating has been supplied to scoring.
Why a low score matters
A low Trust Score does not prove a site is illegal, and can result from one severe finding or a combination of penalties. Read the badges to understand the cause. Treat low-scoring sites as unsafe: avoid payments, logins, and sharing personal data.
Website owners who believe a score is wrong can contact us to request a review.
Related
- See every chain in action on a scan result page
- Read how connected domains are linked through the graph