No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Is snopes.com legit or a scam?
Established fact-checking site with 29-year domain history, clean security scans, and verified business registration.
Analysis Summary
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 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 screenshot shows a fully-rendered, professional news and fact-checking website with no visual indicators of scamming or malicious intent.
What our vision model saw
5 signalsProfessional layout consistent with a legitimate news and fact-checking organization
High-quality, original branding and logo for Snopes
Functional navigation menu with standard editorial categories
Properly attributed articles with specific author names
No deceptive urgency tactics, fake trust badges, or intrusive pop-ups visible
Intelligence
The domain has operated since 1997 with no signs of recent hijacking or impersonation. Zero antivirus engines flagged the page and the hosting IP carries no abuse reports. Business registration confirms Snopes Media Group Inc as an active California corporation. Independent reviews on an independent review aggregator and the Apple App Store describe the service as reliable for fact-checking. Past ownership disputes and article retractions are documented but do not indicate consumer fraud. The combination of age, clean infrastructure, and absence of scam complaints points to a legitimate editorial operation.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for snopes.com, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Domain registered January 9, 1997; 29+ years old; originally launched 1994/1995 as Urban Legends Reference Pages.
- Operated by Snopes Media Group Inc (California S Corp), owned by Chris Richmond (60%) and Drew Schoentrup (40%) since 2022 ownership resolution.
- NewsGuard rating: 100/100 credibility; IFCN signatory complying with fact-checking standards.
- Past internal issues: Co-founder David Mikkelson admitted plagiarism in 54 articles (2015-2019); 60 articles retracted (BuzzFeed investigation 2021).
- 2017-2022 ownership/legal disputes with former partner Proper Media over control and ad revenue; resolved with full acquisition by Richmond/Schoentrup.
- No consumer scam reports, fraud complaints, or BBB/Trustpilot scam listings found; site itself rates external scams and has 'Scam' fact-check category.
- Positive user/app reviews note reliability for fact-checking; some political bias accusations in forums/Reddit but no verified fraud evidence.
- Trustpilotopen
"This company can be proud in its part, in absolute zero honesty to anything shown in media and the news. It's a far left 'fact checker', one of the grim ..."
- Apple App Storeopen
"I've been reading Snopes for many years, back when it started it checked mostly urban legends. Now it does a fantastic job of covering important breaking ..."
Snopes Media Group Inc (SMG) is a California-based S Corporation; wholly owns Snopes, Inc. Owned by Chris Richmond (60%) and Drew Schoentrup (40%).
Our research found no scam reports or consumer complaints against Snopes.com. Two positive reviews appear on an independent review aggregator and the Apple App Store, with users noting the site's long history and fact-checking reliability. Business registration confirms an active California corporation with documented ownership. Past internal editorial issues are recorded but no evidence links the site to consumer fraud or scam operations.
Domain Timeline
- Jan 9, 1997Domain registered
First appeared in WHOIS records — 29 years old today.
- Jul 9, 2026Latest security review — Reviewed as safe
This scan re-ran every check and found no active threat signals.
snopes.com has operated for years with no threat signals in this review — a long, stable track record, though it is never a guarantee on its own.
Threat Detection
Antivirus Engines
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Technical Details
domain · encryption · redirects · server reputation · referencedContact 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://snopes.com/
- 2301https://snopes.com/
- 3200https://www.snopes.com/
Server Reputation
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
What to do
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 snopes.com and not a lookalike like s-nopes.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.
Final Verdict
Snopes.com is the long-running fact-checking site. The 29-year-old domain shows clean scans, active business registration, and positive user reviews with no scam reports.
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 snopes.com. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- snopes.com passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 95/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. snopes.com presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Let's Encrypt · YE2, expiring in 88 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- snopes.com is 29.5 years old, registered on 1/9/1997 through eNom, 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 snopes.com as clean.
- No. snopes.com is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- snopes.com 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.
- Yes. snopes.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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