No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Is census.gov legit or a scam?
Official U.S. Census Bureau site delivering government statistics and surveys on a 28-year-old .gov domain.
Analysis Summary
MT Intelligence
The page content, title, and description line up precisely with the known U.S. Census Bureau homepage. Domain age exceeds 10,000 days with registration through get.gov, confirming long-term federal ownership. The hosting IP shows zero abuse reports and the SSL certificate is valid from DigiCert. Evidence confirms active registration as an official Department of Commerce agency with no scam reports or clone indicators. A single scam-family tag appears triggered by the site's own warnings about impersonators rather than any malicious behavior on the page itself.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for census.gov, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- census.gov is the official homepage of the U.S. Census Bureau (verified via Wikipedia and direct site content)
- U.S. Census Bureau is a federal statistical agency formed in 1902, part of the Department of Commerce
- Official site provides data tables, surveys, and economic information; matches provided page title and description exactly
- Multiple official Census pages warn about scammers impersonating the Bureau via phone/email/fake sites, but no reports of census.gov itself being fraudulent
- Reddit discussions (r/Census) consistently identify official Census mail/surveys as legitimate, not scams
- Domain is .gov TLD reserved for U.S. government entities; no evidence of typosquatting or cloning of other brands
- Domain age of 10,473 days aligns with long-established government site
Official U.S. federal government agency under the Department of Commerce
Our research verified census.gov as the official homepage of the U.S. Census Bureau, a federal agency formed in 1902 under the Department of Commerce. The site content matches exactly, the domain age aligns with its long history, and multiple sources confirm its legitimacy. No scam reports or complaints appear for the domain itself, though the Bureau does publish warnings about phone and email impersonators.
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Contact Verification
We fetched the page and looked for real-world contact details. Legitimate businesses almost always publish an email on their own domain, a phone number, and a postal address. Scam shops usually don't.
- No contact email found anywhere on the page.
- No phone number listed on the page.
- No postal address visible on the page.
- Scam family match: Tech-Support Scam.
- Links to 5 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1302http://census.gov/
- 2200https://www.census.gov/cross-domain
Server Reputation
Scam-Type Likelihood
1 scam-type patterns detected
0 of 13 categories showed signals
We check every URL against 13 distinct scam categories so the verdict tells you not just how risky the page is, but what kind of risk it carries. Each meter pulls from page signals, web reports, our AI analyst, vision, and the scam-network cluster — not from raw AV labels.
- Classic tech-support scare copy found (fake Microsoft/Apple alert, remote-access instructions).
- Primary scraped category: fake tech-support page.
0 of 13 categories showed signals
We check every URL against 13 distinct scam categories so the verdict tells you not just how risky the page is, but what kind of risk it carries. Each meter pulls from page signals, web reports, our AI analyst, vision, and the scam-network cluster — not from raw AV labels.
- Classic tech-support scare copy found (fake Microsoft/Apple alert, remote-access instructions).
- Primary scraped category: fake tech-support page.
Still, stay alert
No major threat indicators — but a clean scan does not guarantee every page is safe, and phishing emails routinely spoof real domains.
- Double-check the exact URL in your address bar
Confirm you are actually on census.gov and not a lookalike like c-ensus.gov.com or an IDN homoglyph.
- Use a password manager
Password managers only auto-fill on the exact domain they were saved for — they refuse to fill lookalike domains, which is the single best phishing defence.
- OpenDiscuss this site on the forum
If you have first-hand experience with this site — good or bad — share it with the MalwareTips community.
Trust History
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
Safety FAQ
Common questions about this site, answered from the scan data on this page. These are auto-generated — not hand-written — so they always match the underlying report.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on census.gov. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- census.gov passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 91/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. census.gov presents a valid TLSv1.2 certificate issued by DigiCert Inc · DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1, expiring in 112 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- census.gov is 28.7 years old, registered on 10/1/1997 through get.gov. Scam domains are often freshly registered — a site under 6 months old warrants extra caution.
- No. census.gov is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- census.gov resolves to an IP operated by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in US (usage type: Government). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad, but unusual geography for a brand's claimed country is one of many signals we weigh.
- We cache results for 24 hours. Signed-in MalwareTips members can trigger a manual rescan at any time using the "Rescan" button on the report page, which re-runs every check from scratch and refreshes this page.
User reviews & comments(0)
Share your experience — "Lost $200 on a fake checkout" is more useful than "Scam". Your review helps others avoid traps.