Is newscientist.com legit or a scam?
Established science magazine with 31-year domain history, active UK business registration, and clean security profile — legitimate news outlet.
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.
MT Intelligence
New Scientist is a well-known science publication founded in 1956 and currently owned by Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) since 2021. The domain newscientist.com has been registered for over 31 years (11,276 days), and our antivirus network shows zero malicious or suspicious flags across 92 engines. The hosting IP has a clean abuse score of 0/100 with no reported incidents. UK Companies House records confirm New Scientist Limited (company number 10644366) is active with a registered office in London. Independent fact-checkers rate the publication as Pro-Science with high factual reporting standards and no failed fact checks. While the evidence package includes a small number of subscription-billing complaints on an independent review aggregator (e.g., unexpected charges after a trial period), these are typical consumer-service disputes rather than indicators of fraud or malware. The site's clean technical profile, established business registration, and positive editorial reputation all support its legitimacy.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for newscientist.com, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- newscientist.com is the official website of New Scientist, a popular science magazine founded in 1956, currently owned by Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) since 2021.
- Company New Scientist Limited (No. 10644366) is active per UK Companies House, with registered office in London.
- Rated Pro-Science with High factual reporting by Media Bias Fact Check; no failed fact checks recorded.
- Trustpilot hosts 246 reviews; some complaints about subscription billing practices (e.g. unexpected charges after $10 trial).
- Reddit and forums contain criticism of journalism quality, sensationalism, and past articles (e.g. EmDrive coverage, "Darwin was Wrong" cover), but no widespread scam or malware reports.
- Domain age of ~31 years (11276 days) aligns with established legitimate media outlet; no evidence of phishing, malware, or impersonation of other brands.
- Has formal complaint policy and customer service contacts; Wikipedia notes history of criticism for sensationalist coverage but remains a major science publication.
- Media Bias Fact Checkopen
"Overall, we rate New Scientist Pro-Science and High for factual reporting due to strong sourcing and a clean fact-check record."
- Google Playopen
"This is the best of the many "popularized science" magazines ... 4.6 star, 6.9k reviews"
- Feefoopen
"New Scientist is the world's most popular weekly science and technology publication."
New Scientist Limited, company number 10644366, registered in England & Wales. Owned by Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) since 2021. Registered office: Northcliffe House, London.
Our research confirmed that newscientist.com is the official website of New Scientist, a science magazine founded in 1956 and currently owned by Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) since 2021. UK Companies House records show New Scientist Limited (company number 10644366) is active with a registered office in London. Independent fact-checkers rate the publication Pro-Science with high factual reporting and no failed fact checks. an independent review aggregator hosts 246 reviews; some users report subscription-billing surprises (e.g., unexpected charges after a $10 trial), but these are typical consumer-service complaints rather than fraud indicators. No widespread scam, phishing, or malware reports were found. The site's 31-year domain history and established editorial reputation support its legitimacy.
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.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://newscientist.com/
- 2301http://www.newscientist.com/cross-domain
- 3200https://www.newscientist.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 newscientist.com and not a lookalike like n-ewscientist.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 newscientist.com. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- newscientist.com passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 87/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. newscientist.com presents a valid TLSv1.2 certificate issued by GlobalSign nv-sa · GlobalSign Atlas R3 DV TLS CA 2025 Q4, expiring in 182 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- newscientist.com is 30.9 years old, registered on 7/29/1995 through Nom-iq Ltd. dba COM LAUDE. 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 newscientist.com as clean.
- No. newscientist.com is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- newscientist.com resolves to an IP operated by Fastly, Inc. in IE (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. newscientist.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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