No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Is openfactbook.org legit or a scam?
Legitimate community-run successor to the CIA World Factbook with clean scans, 105-day-old domain, and media mentions.
Analysis Summary
MT Intelligence
The site presents itself as an open, donation-supported alternative to the official CIA World Factbook with country data, rankings, and comparisons. No antivirus engines flagged the page, browser blocklists are clean, and the hosting IP shows zero abuse reports. The domain is only 105 days old, which is recent, but the project is explicitly tied to an independent developer and has received favorable mentions in established publications. Visual analysis shows a professional layout with no scam indicators or suspicious elements. Evidence from our research confirms zero scam reports or complaints and two positive references describing it as a non-commercial project.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site.
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
Clean, professional site layout with no scam indicators visible.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for openfactbook.org, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- - Domain registered ~105 days ago; launched after CIA World Factbook shutdown in early 2026.
- - Maintained by independent developer Phillip Paik as non-commercial, donation-supported project with no ads/trackers.
- - Positive media coverage in Fast Company (May 2026) calling it 'Wikipedia meets the CIA' and recommendations on Reddit, Facebook, MetaFilter.
- - No scam reports, fraud mentions, or user complaints found across targeted searches.
- - Aggregates data from authoritative sources including prior CIA Factbook; GitHub-linked open elements noted.
- - Recommended as free alternative on education/government info sites and social media.
- Fast Companyopen
"The new version is called OpenFactBook. It’s a community-maintained successor to the original from the CIA."
- freegovinfo.infoopen
"As their About page says, this site is built and maintained by Phillip Paik, an independent developer and is a non-commercial project (though they do prominently ask for donations)."
Our research found no scam reports or complaints for openfactbook.org. Two positive mentions were located: Fast Company described it as a community-maintained successor to the CIA World Factbook, and freegovinfo.info noted it as a non-commercial project by independent developer Phillip Paik. No business registration records exist, consistent with its stated independent status.
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://openfactbook.org/
- 2200https://openfactbook.org/
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 openfactbook.org and not a lookalike like o-penfactbook.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 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 openfactbook.org. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- openfactbook.org passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 85/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. openfactbook.org presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Google Trust Services · WE1, expiring in 44 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- openfactbook.org is 3 months old, registered on 2/11/2026 through Cloudflare, Inc.. 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 openfactbook.org as clean.
- No. openfactbook.org is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- openfactbook.org 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.
- 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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