Is quad9.net legit or a scam?
Quad9 is a legitimate, Swiss-based non-profit DNS provider that blocks malware and phishing threats with a 9-year history of reliability.
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.
No scam visual patterns detected
The website appears to be a legitimate, professionally designed landing page for the Quad9 DNS service, showing no visual indicators of scam or malicious intent.
What our vision model saw
6 signalsProfessional layout with consistent branding and typography
Clear explanation of service purpose and organizational background
No fake urgency, countdowns, or intrusive pop-ups visible
Functional navigation menu and language selector
Displays technical data consistent with a DNS service provider
High-quality design with no broken elements or placeholder text
MT Intelligence
The domain has been active for over nine years and is the verified home of the Quad9 Foundation. Our analysis shows zero flags from over 90 antivirus engines and a clean reputation across all major blocklists. The site is backed by a registered Swiss public-benefit foundation and was originally founded by established organizations like IBM and the Global Cyber Alliance. Independent security evaluations consistently rank this service as one of the most effective tools for blocking malicious domains. There are no signs of fraudulent activity, data harvesting, or deceptive practices.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for quad9.net, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- quad9.net is the official website of Quad9, a free public recursive DNS resolver operated by the Swiss Quad9 Foundation (not-for-profit, registration CHE-435.091.407 in Zürich).
- Service launched in 2016; provides malware/phishing blocking using threat intelligence from 20-25+ independent sources; independent tests show ~97% effectiveness.
- Strong privacy focus: no logging of user IP addresses in queries, GDPR-compliant, subject to Swiss privacy law; supports DNSSEC, DoH, DoT.
- Operates anycast network with servers in 100+ countries; blocks hundreds of millions of malicious queries daily (e.g., >670M threats/day reported in some periods).
- No scam reports or significant complaints found across web searches, Reddit, or review sites; generally praised in privacy and sysadmin communities for reliability and security.
- One notable legal case (Sony Music vs Quad9, 2021-2023) involved a dismissed injunction over blocking a piracy-related domain; not related to scams or user harm.
- Domain age ~9+ years (launched 2016); widely recommended as a secure, privacy-oriented alternative to ISP or commercial DNS (e.g., vs Cloudflare 1.1.1.1).
- Wikipediaopen
"Several independent evaluations have found Quad9 to be the most effective (97%) at blocking malware and phishing domains."
- Reddit r/PrivacyGuidesopen
"Yes it is a good idea in general"
- Reddit r/sysadminopen
"We have used Quad9 for the last 3 years or so... It has been very reliable without an outage."
- CaptainDNSopen
"Quad9 is a popular alternative when you want a public DNS focused on security + privacy: it can block domains associated with malware/phishing"
Quad9 Foundation, Swiss public-benefit not-for-profit foundation, registration no. CHE-435.091.407, headquartered in Zürich. Founded 2016 by Packet Clearing House, IBM, Global Cyber Alliance.
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 (149.112.112.112).
- Links to 4 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://quad9.net/
- 2200https://quad9.net/
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 quad9.net and not a lookalike like q-uad9.net.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 quad9.net. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- quad9.net passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 97/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. quad9.net presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Let's Encrypt · YE2, expiring in 67 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- quad9.net is 9.1 years old, registered on 5/25/2017 through Key-Systems GmbH. 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 quad9.net as clean.
- No. quad9.net is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- quad9.net resolves to an IP operated by Zurich, Switzerland in CH (usage type: Data Center/Web Hosting/Transit). 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. quad9.net 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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