Is goodwillhouston.org legit or a scam?
Official Goodwill of Houston nonprofit site — established 1945, verified 501(c)(3) status, 4-star customer rating, zero fraud indicators.
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.
Visual red flags detected in the screenshot
We could not capture a fully-rendered screenshot of this page; visual analysis is inconclusive.
What our vision model saw
1 signalScreenshot incomplete — site may be slow to render
MT Intelligence
Our scan found zero malicious detections across our antivirus network, clean browser blocklists, and a valid SSL certificate issued by a trusted authority. The domain is 28+ years old (registered in 1996) and resolves to a clean hosting IP with no abuse history. The evidence package confirms this is the official website of Goodwill Industries of Houston, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit with EIN 74-1285095, tax-exempt since 1949, and active Form 990 filings through 2024. The organization's corporate address, phone number, and leadership are consistently listed across ProPublica, GuideStar, and Charity Navigator, which report strong accountability and financial-management scores. Independent review aggregators show a 4.0-star rating from 755+ customers with no complaints or scam mentions. The site's content, social-media presence, and partnerships with the City of Houston and educational platforms all align with a well-established nonprofit operator.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for goodwillhouston.org, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Domain goodwillhouston.org is the official site for Goodwill Industries of Houston, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit operating thrift stores, donation centers, job training, and career services in the Greater Houston area since 1945.
- EIN 74-1285095 confirmed across the organization's site, ProPublica (tax-exempt since Aug 1949, Form 990 filings up to 2024), GuideStar, and Charity Navigator.
- Corporate address 1140 West Loop North, Houston, TX 77055 and phone 713-692-6221 listed consistently; partners with City of Houston, ed2go for training, and recognized by BBB with Pinnacle Awards.
- No scam reports, phishing mentions, or fraud alerts found in searches for the domain or organization; legitimacy analyses (desenmascara.me) rate it as legitimate.
- Customer reviews aggregate to 4.0/5 on Trustindex (755+ reviews); site hosts its own positive customer testimonials; general Goodwill complaints exist elsewhere but none specific to Houston or this domain.
- Active on Facebook (GoodwillHoustonOrg), X, Instagram; maintains 40+ thrift stores and career centers; Charity Navigator Beacon Report shows strong scores in accountability, leadership, and finance metrics.
- Trustindex.ioopen
"Goodwill Houston is trusted by over 708 customers, earning a 4-star rating! ... 4.0 | 755 reviews"
- desenmascara.meopen
"✅ goodwillhouston.org — Legitimate · 3/100 ... The website presents a professional and coherent brand identity consistent with Goodwill Houston, a well-known nonprofit organization."
- Goodwill Houston site (reviews page)open
"Surprised how organized this location is, the manager Steve Carranza explained the store policy."
501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 74-1285095), tax-exempt since August 1949, files Form 990s through at least 2024 (ProPublica), listed on GuideStar/Charity Navigator with Beacon scores (multiple 100%, Accountability 75-100%).
Our research confirmed that goodwillhouston.org is the official website of Goodwill Industries of Houston, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit operating since 1945. The organization holds EIN 74-1285095, with tax-exempt status confirmed by ProPublica (active since August 1949) and current Form 990 filings through 2024. The corporate address (1140 West Loop North, Houston, TX 77055) and phone number (713-692-6221) are consistently listed across ProPublica, GuideStar, and Charity Navigator. Charity Navigator's Beacon Report shows strong accountability and financial-management scores. Independent review aggregators report a 4.0-star rating from 755+ customers with no complaints. No scam reports, phishing mentions, or fraud alerts were found in any search results. The organization is recognized by the BBB with Pinnacle Awards and maintains active partnerships with the City of Houston and educational platforms.
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 postal address visible on the page.
- Contact email on the site's own domain (37d0877ca1dd4613a732a0cb6da03b55@goodwillhouston.org).
- Phone number listed (74-1285095).
- Links to 8 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://goodwillhouston.org/
- 2200https://www.goodwillhouston.org/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 goodwillhouston.org and not a lookalike like g-oodwillhouston.org.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 goodwillhouston.org. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- goodwillhouston.org passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 89/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. goodwillhouston.org presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Starfield Technologies, Inc. · Starfield Secure Certificate Authority - G2, expiring in 138 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- goodwillhouston.org is 28.7 years old, registered on 10/28/1997 through Network Solutions, LLC. 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 goodwillhouston.org as clean.
- No. goodwillhouston.org is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- goodwillhouston.org resolves to an IP operated by Sucuri 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.
- This is a permanent record of the scan run on June 18, 2026. The verdict and evidence above reflect that scan and do not change on their own. If circumstances around goodwillhouston.org have changed, MalwareTips staff can run a fresh scan, which re-runs every check from scratch and publishes an updated report.
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