Is curl.se legit or a scam?
The official home of the curl and libcurl open-source project, used in billions of devices and verified by major software repositories.
Analysis Summary
No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site. See full visual analysis →
Visual Screenshot Analysis
We capture a fresh screenshot of the live page and ask a vision model to look for scam visual patterns — fake trust badges, countdown timers, overlay pop-ups, and visual clones of legitimate brands.
No scam visual patterns detected
The screenshot shows the legitimate, fully-rendered homepage for the curl open-source project, featuring standard technical documentation and project information.
What our vision model saw
6 signalsProfessional open-source project layout for the curl command line tool
Clear navigation menu for documentation, downloads, and development
Legitimate sponsor logos displayed including wolfSSL and Fastly
Detailed technical information regarding supported protocols and use cases
No deceptive urgency, fake trust badges, or intrusive pop-ups present
Consistent branding for the curl project and libcurl library
MT Intelligence
Our analysis confirms this is the legitimate domain for the curl project, a cornerstone of modern internet infrastructure. The site is clean across 92 antivirus engines and is hosted on a reputable IP with no history of abuse. Visual inspection shows a professional technical layout consistent with its role as a documentation and download hub. Global traffic data and widespread citations from authoritative sources like Wikipedia and GitHub reinforce its authenticity. There are no deceptive patterns, and the project maintains a transparent security disclosure policy.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for curl.se, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- curl.se is the official website for the curl command-line tool and libcurl library, a free and open-source project used in billions of installations worldwide.
- Domain registered on October 19, 2020 (created after previous owner let it expire); expires October 19, 2026; registrar Oderland; nameservers include ns1.haxx.se; status active.
- Project led by Daniel Stenberg in Sweden; previously hosted at curl.haxx.se and curl.haxx.nu; domain curl.se was donated to the project in 2020.
- Site provides downloads, documentation, latest version 8.20.0 (released 2026-04-29), security vulnerability disclosure process, and commercial support options.
- Widely referenced as the authoritative source by Wikipedia, GitHub repository, Docker official images, Microsoft docs, CRAN, and major Linux distributions.
- No scam reports, phishing complaints, or negative reviews found; searches for "curl.se scam" primarily return discussions of curl being abused *by* malware (e.g. in download commands), not the site itself.
- Project follows open-source best practices, has a public CVE history page, and maintains active development with frequent releases.
Maintained by Daniel Stenberg / Haxx (Swedish aktiebolag since ~1997); domain curl.se registered to project (no separate company for the domain itself)
Antivirus Engines
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 postal address visible on the page.
- Phone number listed (2026-04-29).
- Links to 4 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://curl.se/
- 2200https://curl.se/
Server Reputation
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 curl.se and not a lookalike like c-url.se.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.
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 directly from the scan data above — so the answers always reflect the latest verdict on this page.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on curl.se. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- curl.se passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 97/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. curl.se presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Let's Encrypt · YR1, expiring in 74 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- No. All 92 antivirus engines in our malware network report curl.se as clean.
- No. curl.se is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- curl.se resolves to an IP operated by Fastly, Inc. in US (usage type: Content Delivery Network). 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.
- Yes. curl.se sits in the global top-100k on Cloudflare Radar, which means it has substantial real-world traffic. That does not automatically make it safe, but established brands almost always rank here and throwaway scam domains almost never do.
- This is a permanent record of the scan run on June 20, 2026. The verdict and evidence above reflect that scan and do not change on their own. If circumstances around curl.se have changed, MalwareTips staff can run a fresh scan, which re-runs every check from scratch and publishes an updated report.
User reviews & comments(0)
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