Is nhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net safe?
https://nhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net/
Checked on
How we checked
Coverage: complete · 6 of 6 applicable core capabilities
- Antivirus (60 of 93 engines answered): completed
- Google Safe Browsing: completed
- page reading: completed
- page capture: completed
- domain records: completed
- web research: completed
An NHS Scotland testing subdomain that mirrors NHS Lothian's policy site, flagged by 12 antivirus engines
This address is a testing subdomain on the nhsscotland.net domain that reproduces the NHS Lothian "Policy Online" pages, complete with NHS Lothian branding and links to official NHS boards, councils and Scottish Government sites. The content itself looks like a genuine health-service policy repository, and the connection is encrypted with a valid certificate. What keeps the score in the moderate band is that 12 of 93 antivirus engines flag this specific host as malicious, with 11 independent engine families reporting an adverse result, while the browser threat feed returns no warning. A staging environment that is publicly reachable and flagged by security vendors is not a place to enter personal or clinical information.
Saved site captureCaptured safely during this scan12 antivirus engines flagged this URLalphaMountain.ai, BitDefender, CRDF, CyRadar, Forcepoint ThreatSeekerWhere this site sits
- Dangerous1–20
- High Risk21–44
- Moderate Risk45–69
- Low Risk70–84
- Safe85–100
The score combines saved evidence strength and analysis quality. Coverage is reported separately.
Why 62/100
Moderate Risk covers scores 45–69. 1 finding pulled the score down; 5 pushed it up.
What pulled the score down
- Decisive11 independent antivirus families reported an adverse result.
What pushed the score up
- SupportsThe page carries NHS Lothian Policy Online branding and links only to NHS, Scottish Government and Lothian council domains.
- SupportsThe browser threat feed returned no threat warning for the host.
- SupportsThe saved TLS check found a valid encrypted connection.
- SupportsPhone number listed (0131 242 1000).
- SupportsThe address is a testing subdomain of nhsscotland.net; the parent domain's long registration does not show how long this subdomain has existed.
No points per finding are stored for this report: our analysis weighed all findings together to set the score. Each finding shows its saved severity instead (Decisive, Strong, Moderate or Minor).
01 · Investigation Brief
Investigation Brief
This address is a testing subdomain on the nhsscotland.net domain that reproduces the NHS Lothian "Policy Online" pages, complete with NHS Lothian branding and links to official NHS boards, councils and Scottish Government sites. The content itself looks like a genuine health-service policy repository, and the connection is encrypted with a valid certificate. What keeps the score in the moderate band is that 12 of 93 antivirus engines flag this specific host as malicious, with 11 independent engine families reporting an adverse result, while the browser threat feed returns no warning. A staging environment that is publicly reachable and flagged by security vendors is not a place to enter personal or clinical information.
What the site actually is
The page header reads "NHS Lothian | Policy Online" and the address sits on a testing subdomain of nhsscotland.net. Independent research describes Policy Online as the internet repository for all current and approved NHS Lothian policies, hosted at policyonline.nhslothian.scot, so this host is a copy of that repository rather than a separate commercial venture.
The page body is ordinary public-sector material: sections for Our Services, News & Media, Freedom of Information, NHS Lothian Careers, Enquiries & Contacts and Accessibility, plus a statement about the roughly 3,000 colleagues who developed NHS Lothian's shared values. Outbound links point to nhslothian.scot, scot.nhs.uk, gov.scot, the four Lothian councils, the health and social care partnerships, Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service. None of these links carries a commercial or affiliate purpose.
A phone number, 0131 242 1000, is published on the site, and the parent domain nhsscotland.net has been registered for roughly 25 years. That age belongs to the parent domain, not to this subdomain, so it says nothing about how long this particular testing host has existed.
Technical flags versus operator behaviour
The strongest adverse fact is the antivirus picture: 12 malicious and 0 suspicious detections across 93 engines, with 11 independent engine families reporting an adverse result, including alphaMountain.ai, BitDefender and CRDF. That is a substantial vendor consensus against this exact host, not a single stray hit.
The counterweight is real but limited. The browser threat feed returned no threat warning and the saved TLS check found a valid encrypted connection, so there is no browser-level block and traffic is encrypted in transit. Neither result clears the vendor detections; they simply mean the two checks we could run came back clean.
On the operator side there is no commercial mechanism at all: no checkout, no affiliate links, no subscription, no cross-domain order path. The site presents itself as a public health-service resource and its links stay inside NHS, government and council domains. The unresolved question is why this staging host, unlike the production policy site, attracts a dozen vendor detections — a question the available evidence does not answer.
Why the score is 62
11 independent antivirus families reported an adverse result.
02 · Security Evidence
Security evidence
Antivirus Engines
12/ 93
detectionsFresh result
12 engines flagged this URL
Every saved adverse engine is listed below. The full provider matrix remains available for audit.
- Malicious
- 12
- Suspicious
- 0
- Total
- 93
| Engine | Finding |
|---|---|
| alphaMountain.aiMalicious | phishing |
| BitDefenderMalicious | phishing |
| CRDFMalicious | malicious |
| CyRadarMalicious | phishing |
| Forcepoint ThreatSeekerMalicious | phishing |
| FortinetMalicious | phishing |
| G-DataMalicious | phishing |
| KasperskyMalicious | phishing |
| LionicMalicious | phishing |
| SafeToOpenMalicious | phishing |
| SophosMalicious | phishing |
| WebrootMalicious | malicious |
All 93 engine results
- alphaMountain.ai - phishing - Malicious
- BitDefender - phishing - Malicious
- CRDF - Malicious
- CyRadar - phishing - Malicious
- Forcepoint ThreatSeeker - phishing - Malicious
- Fortinet - phishing - Malicious
- G-Data - phishing - Malicious
- Kaspersky - phishing - Malicious
- Lionic - phishing - Malicious
- SafeToOpen - phishing - Malicious
- Sophos - phishing - Malicious
- Webroot - Malicious
- 0xSI_f33d - Unrated
- Abusix - Clean
- Acronis - Clean
- ADMINUSLabs - Clean
- AILabs (MONITORAPP) - Clean
- AlienVault - Clean
- AlphaSOC - Unrated
- Antiy-AVL - Clean
- ArcSight Threat Intelligence - Unrated
- AutoShun - Unrated
- Bfore.Ai PreCrime - Unrated
- Bkav - Unrated
- BlockList - Clean
- Blueliv - Clean
- Certego - Clean
- ChainPatrol - Unrated
- Chong Lua Dao - Clean
- CINS Army - Clean
- Criminal IP - Unrated
- CSIS Security Group - Unrated
- CTX AI - Clean
- Cyan - Unrated
- Cyble - Clean
- desenmascara.me - Clean
- DNS8 - Unrated
- Dr.Web - Clean
- EmergingThreats - Clean
- Emsisoft - Clean
- Ermes - Unrated
- ESET - Clean
- ESTsecurity - Clean
- Fortra - Unrated
- GCP Abuse Intelligence - Unrated
- Google Safe Browsing - Clean
- GreenSnow - Clean
- GreyNoise - Unrated
- Gridinsoft - Unrated
- Guardpot - Unrated
- Heimdal Security - Clean
- Hunt.io Intelligence - Unrated
- IPsum - Clean
- Juniper Networks - Clean
- K7AntiVirus - Unrated
- LevelBlue - Clean
- Lumu - Unrated
- Malwared - Clean
- MalwarePatrol - Clean
- MalwareURL - Unrated
- Mimecast - Unrated
- Netcraft - Unrated
- OpenPhish - Clean
- Orcapot - Unrated
- PhishFort - Unrated
- Phishing Database - Clean
- Phishtank - Clean
- PREBYTES - Clean
- PrecisionSec - Unrated
- Quick Heal - Clean
- Quttera - Clean
- Rising - Clean
- Sangfor - Clean
- Sansec eComscan - Unrated
- Scantitan - Clean
- SCUMWARE.org - Clean
- Seclookup - Clean
- Snort IP sample list - Unrated
- SOCRadar - Unrated
- StopForumSpam - Clean
- Sucuri SiteCheck - Clean
- Synthient - Unrated
- ThreatHive - Clean
- URLhaus - Clean
- URLQuery - Unrated
- Viettel Threat Intelligence - Clean
- VIPRE - Unrated
- ViriBack - Clean
- VX Vault - Clean
- Xcitium Verdict Cloud - Clean
- Yandex Safebrowsing - Clean
- ZeroCERT - Clean
- ZeroFox - Unrated
How security vendors categorise this site
- alphaMountain.aiPhishing
- Forcepoint ThreatSeekerphishing and other frauds
- Sophosphishing and fraud
- WebrootPhishing and Other Frauds
- Googlehealthcare
Each vendor’s own label for the site, saved with the antivirus result. Labels are separate from the engine verdicts above and can disagree with each other.
Security Scans
Checked against the browser threat feeds available to this scan — no hit.
What we observed
Visual context from the captured page
NHS Lothian | Policy Online
What the captured page showed
1 observation- 01
NHS Lothian | Policy Online
What the page says about itself
Quoted from the pages we read: the site's own words, not our findings.
- Page title
Policy Online – NHS Lothian | Policy Online
Pages we read
- Main page/Read
- Privacy policy/privacy-policy-cookies/Read
- Contact page/contact/Read
03 · Investigation Story
Investigation story
What the site claims
Policy Online – NHS Lothian | Policy Online
What we observed
The page content was captured and checked alongside 60 antivirus results.
What independent research found
1 external finding was saved and compared with the page evidence.
What remains unverified
The checks completed, but ownership, business claims, and future site behavior can still change after this snapshot.
What kind of site and risk is this?
Threat category
No threat category confirmed
Service and business model
Content
Observed behavior
Evidence behind this classification
- 0112 malicious and 0 suspicious detections across 93 engines, with 11 independent engine families reporting an adverse result.
- 0211 independent antivirus families reported an adverse result.
- 03The browser threat feed returned no threat warning for the host.
If this is a scam — what it means for you
What a visitor should expect
A visitor arriving here reads policy documents and follows links to official NHS and council pages; nothing on the page asks for payment or account credentials. The exposure is therefore about which host you are on, not about a funnel: this is a testing address, and 12 antivirus engines treat it as malicious.
If this is a scam, how it works
The evidence-backed path
Each stage below is preserved from the grounded analysis and linked to saved evidence.
Because the published contact number and the linked destinations belong to the real NHS Lothian estate, the practical step is to reach the same material through the production policy site rather than through this testing host.
Read NHS Lothian policies on the production Policy Online site at policyonline.nhslothian.scot instead of this testing subdomain. The content here matches the official repository, but 12 antivirus engines flag this specific host, and a staging environment is not the right place to enter any personal or clinical details.
Web research findings
Independent findings for nhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net, including public complaints, named review sources, registration records, and look-alike-domain evidence.
- NHS Lothian Policy Onlineopen
"Policy Online is the internet repository for all current and approved NHS Lothian policies"
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
04 · Domain & Infrastructure
Domain & infrastructure
The plumbing behind the site — who registered it, how it’s encrypted, where it’s hosted, and where it links out. A valid certificate or a calm server doesn’t mean the business is honest — scam sites pass these checks too.
Infrastructure map
- Domainnhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net
- Redirects tonhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net
- Hosted byMicrosoft Corporation
- Referencesgmpg.org · ajax.googleapis.com
Domain Timeline
- Feb 9, 2001Domain registered
First appeared in WHOIS records — 25 years old when this review was saved.
- Nov 4, 2026Saved security review — Rated Moderate Risk
The evidence in this saved scan is mixed or incomplete; the completed checks are detailed above.
Contact Verification
Saved contact details can help identify the operator. Their presence supports traceability; it does not prove the business is trustworthy.
- Phone number listed (0131 242 1000).
Domain & Encryption
Certificate issued for *.testing.nhsscotland.net.
Payment providers the page loads
None seen among the outside domains we saved.
Read from the first 20 outside domains the page loads and the shop platform it uses; the web server and platform rows are under Hosting & Technology. A payment script on the page does not prove the shop accepts that method at checkout, or that you are protected.
Server Reputation
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
05 · Evidence Ledger
Evidence ledger
- Antiviruscomplete
- Browser threat feedcomplete
- Page contentcomplete
- Analysiscomplete
- Visual evidencecomplete
The conclusion is supported by the evidence saved with this report.
Technical threat
maliciousMalware, phishing, credential theft and hostile infrastructure.
11 independent antivirus families reported an adverse result.
Operator / customer risk
unknownComplaints, withdrawals, business conduct and commercial traps.
No confirmed evidence in this dimension.
Source coverage and freshness
Status shows whether usable evidence was saved; finding shows what that evidence observed.
| Source | Result | Completion | Finding | Freshness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antivirus | 12 of 93 engines flagged | Completed | Adverse | fresh · analysed Nov 4, 2026 |
| Browser protection | No browser threat-list match | Completed | No adverse finding | this scan · Nov 4, 2026 |
| Page content | Page fetched · HTTP 200 | Completed | No adverse finding | this scan · Nov 4, 2026 |
| Visual evidence | 1 visible observation saved with the page capture | Completed | No adverse finding | this scan · Nov 4, 2026 |
| Independent research | 1 independent finding was saved | Completed | No adverse finding | this scan · Nov 4, 2026 |
- Antivirus
- Result12 of 93 engines flagged
- CompletionCompletedFindingAdverse
- Freshnessfresh · analysed Nov 4, 2026
- Browser protection
- ResultNo browser threat-list match
- CompletionCompletedFindingNo adverse finding
- Freshnessthis scan · Nov 4, 2026
- Page content
- ResultPage fetched · HTTP 200
- CompletionCompletedFindingNo adverse finding
- Freshnessthis scan · Nov 4, 2026
- Visual evidence
- Result1 visible observation saved with the page capture
- CompletionCompletedFindingNo adverse finding
- Freshnessthis scan · Nov 4, 2026
- Independent research
- Result1 independent finding was saved
- CompletionCompletedFindingNo adverse finding
- Freshnessthis scan · Nov 4, 2026
07 · Safety FAQ
Safety FAQ
Answered from the saved verdict and evidence in this report.
Is nhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net a scam or is it safe?
Is nhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net safe to use?
Has nhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net been flagged by antivirus engines?
Is nhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net on any phishing or malware blacklists?
How old is the nhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net domain?
Does nhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net have a valid SSL certificate?
Where is nhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net hosted?
How often is the nhslothian-policyonline.testing.nhsscotland.net report updated?
08 · Final Verdict
Final verdict
An NHS Scotland testing subdomain that mirrors NHS Lothian's policy site, flagged by 12 antivirus engines
This address is a testing subdomain on the nhsscotland.net domain that reproduces the NHS Lothian "Policy Online" pages, complete with NHS Lothian branding and links to official NHS boards, councils and Scottish Government sites. The content itself looks like a genuine health-service policy repository, and the connection is encrypted with a valid certificate. What keeps the score in the moderate band is that 12 of 93 antivirus engines flag this specific host as malicious, with 11 independent engine families reporting an adverse result, while the browser threat feed returns no warning. A staging environment that is publicly reachable and flagged by security vendors is not a place to enter personal or clinical information.
09 · Community
Community
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