Is dictionary.com legit or a scam?
Dictionary.com is a highly established educational authority with over 30 years of history and no technical security risks.
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 displays a professionally designed, fully-rendered educational website with no visual indicators of scam activity or deceptive patterns.
What our vision model saw
6 signalsProfessional layout consistent with a legitimate educational resource
Functional search bar and navigation menu for 'Games' and 'Writing Tips'
Presence of established brand logos for Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com
No deceptive urgency tactics or fake trust badges visible
Standard 'Word of the Day' and 'Featured Game' widgets
Clean design with no intrusive pop-ups or suspicious modals
MT Intelligence
The domain has been registered since 1995 and is a top-tier global website with massive traffic. Our antivirus network and malware engines show zero detections across nearly 100 scanners. The site is owned by a verifiable US-based educational company, IXL Learning, and uses standard, secure infrastructure. While we noted recent user frustration regarding the discontinuation of certain legacy app features, these are customer service issues rather than security threats. The technical signals—including a clean hosting IP and valid SSL—all point to a safe, professional operation.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for dictionary.com, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Domain registered on May 14, 1995; one of the earliest major online reference sites, now owned by IXL Learning (acquired 2024 from Rock Holdings).
- Primary content is a proprietary dictionary based on Random House Unabridged, supplemented by Collins, American Heritage, and others.
- Significant recent user backlash (2025) over discontinuation of premium/ad-free app features, deletion of user accounts and saved word lists without notice or refunds.
- Trustpilot shows low score (2/5 from 11 reviews); BBB rating A- but not accredited, with 1 unresolved complaint due to non-response.
- App Store maintains high aggregate rating (4.8/5 from hundreds of thousands) but recent reviews heavily criticize the 2025 changes, with some calling it a "scam".
- No evidence of malware, phishing, data breaches, or fraudulent schemes targeting users; complaints center on poor customer service and subscription handling.
- Address and corporate history verifiable via Wikipedia, press releases, and BBB profile in Oakland, California.
- Apple App Store reviewsopen
"This app betrayed its entire user base by deleting our paid accounts that had ad free and offline features with no alternative or refund. This app is a scam."
- Apple App Store reviewsopen
"It does not even allow the user to log in to their paid service to turn off ads and access their favorites…In one word: terrible. I reported the scam to the App Store."
- Ars Technicaopen
"Dictionary.com “devastated” paid users by abruptly deleting saved words lists... Users reported being unable to log in and access premium features... Dictionary.com doesn’t offer refunds for premium purchases."
- Wikipediaopen
"Dictionary.com is an online dictionary whose domain was first registered on May 14, 1995. ... one of the web's first in-depth reference sites... owned by IXL Learning."
- Apple App Storeopen
"The #1 free dictionary app! With more than 2 million trusted definitions and synonyms... 4.8 out of 5 from 328K Ratings."
- Google for Publishersopen
"As the oldest online dictionary, Dictionary.com has become a source of trusted linguistic information for millions of users."
Domain registered May 14, 1995 (over 31 years). Operated as Dictionary.com, LLC (formerly under IAC, Rock Holdings). Acquired by IXL Learning in 2024. Address: 555 12th St, Oakland, CA 94607. BBB file opened 2018; not accredited, A- rating due to failure to respond to 1 complaint.
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 phone number listed on the page.
- No postal address visible on the page.
- Links to 5 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://dictionary.com/
- 2200https://www.dictionary.com/cross-domain
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 dictionary.com and not a lookalike like d-ictionary.com.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 dictionary.com. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- dictionary.com passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 95/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. dictionary.com presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Google Trust Services · WE1, expiring in 43 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- dictionary.com is 31.1 years old, registered on 5/14/1995 through 101domain GRS Limited. Scam domains are often freshly registered — a site under 6 months old warrants extra caution.
- No. All 92 antivirus engines in our malware network report dictionary.com as clean.
- No. dictionary.com is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- dictionary.com resolves to an IP operated by Cloudflare, 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. dictionary.com 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.
User reviews & comments(0)
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