No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Is horizonhobby.com legit or a scam?
Official 30-year-old RC hobby retailer with clean security scans but mixed customer reviews on service and billing.
Analysis Summary
MT Intelligence
The domain is over 30 years old and matches the known business Horizon Hobby, LLC founded in 1985. Our antivirus network and browser blocklists returned zero flags, and the hosting IP shows no abuse history. The page content displays a full product catalog for RC cars, planes, and accessories with no login forms or scam indicators. Evidence shows 109 BBB complaints and a 2.5 independent review aggregator score focused on order delays and billing issues rather than fraud. Positive feedback appears on Bizrate with an 8.8 rating from over 1,600 reviews. No clone or impersonation signals were detected.
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 horizonhobby.com, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Domain horizonhobby.com is the official website of Horizon Hobby, LLC, a US-based RC hobby manufacturer/distributor founded in 1985.
- BBB lists 109 customer complaints in the last 3 years for Horizon Hobby, LLC (not BBB accredited).
- Trustpilot rating: 2.5/5 based on 494 reviews.
- Multiple forum posts (RCGroups, Reddit, ArrmaForum) report issues with customer service, delayed charges, order problems, and selective review publishing.
- Official company and brand pages (ARRMA, Horizon Hobby) warn of widespread fake social media accounts and scam sites impersonating them offering fake sales/giveaways.
- Positive feedback exists on Bizrate (8.8/10 from 1638 reviews) and recent verified buyer reviews on the site itself.
- No evidence of the domain being a typosquat or clone; it is the legitimate brand domain with ~30 years history.
- BBB.orgopen
"109 total complaints in the last 3 years. 22 complaints closed in the last 12 months."
- arrmaforum.comopen
"Fast Forward to early October and I get a charge for the amount of the parts I ordered in August. ... reported it to my credit card company who concluded it was fraud."
- Trustpilotopen
"TrustScore 2.5 out of 5. 494 reviews."
- rccrawler.comopen
"What they do is check your posted review and if you're not saying it's the best product in the world and rate it 5 stars they just don't publish it."
Horizon Hobby, LLC; founded 1985; headquartered Champaign, Illinois; privately held; also UK subsidiary HORIZON HOBBY LIMITED active since 2003.
Our research found multiple customer complaints on BBB (109 total) and independent review aggregator (2.5/5 score) centered on order processing, billing timing, and customer service. Forum discussions on RC hobby sites echo concerns about delayed charges and selective review publishing. Positive signals include an 8.8/10 Bizrate rating from over 1,600 reviews and confirmation that horizonhobby.com is the legitimate brand site, not a clone.
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 (203877505722).
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1307http://horizonhobby.com/
- 2308https://horizonhobby.com/
- 3200https://www.horizonhobby.com/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.
- Page contains e-commerce copy (cart / checkout / shipping).
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.
- Page contains e-commerce copy (cart / checkout / shipping).
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 horizonhobby.com and not a lookalike like h-orizonhobby.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 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 horizonhobby.com. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- horizonhobby.com passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 77/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. horizonhobby.com presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by GoDaddy.com, Inc. · Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2, expiring in 49 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- horizonhobby.com is 30.2 years old, registered on 4/8/1996 through GoDaddy.com, 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 horizonhobby.com as clean.
- No. horizonhobby.com is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- horizonhobby.com resolves to an IP operated by Microsoft Corporation 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.
- 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)
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