Is space.com legit or a scam?
Space.com is a long-standing, award-winning science news authority owned by Future plc with no history of fraud or malicious activity.
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
This domain has been active for over 10,000 days, which is an exceptional indicator of stability and legitimacy. Our analysis confirms it is owned by Future plc, a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange. The site is widely recognized by educational and journalistic organizations for its high factual standards. All technical scans, including our antivirus network and browser blocklists, show zero threats. The site's infrastructure is robust and consistent with a major global media brand.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for space.com, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Space.com launched July 20, 1999 by Lou Dobbs and Rich Zahradnik; acquired by Future plc in 2018 (from Purch).
- Owned by Future plc, a UK public limited company (No. 03757874), registered office Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA; active and listed on LSE.
- Member of IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation); abides by Editors’ Code of Practice with formal complaints process via legal@futurenet.com or IPSO.
- Rated Pro-Science / High factual reporting by Media Bias Fact Check with clean fact-check record; has won journalism awards including Online Journalism Award (2003) and multiple Webby honors.
- Syndicates content to major outlets including CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo, and USA Today; maintains editorial independence with clear affiliate/advertising disclosures.
- Reddit users criticize occasional clickbait headlines and article quality, but no scam, fraud, or phishing reports found for space.com itself.
- Contact: 130 West 42nd Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10036; +1 (212) 378-0400; community@space.com.
- Media Bias Fact Checkopen
"Space.com is rated Pro-Science with High factual reporting by Media Bias Fact Check. ... High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact-check record."
- Wikipediaopen
"Received the Online Journalism Award for Breaking News for its coverage of the Columbia shuttle disaster. ... Webby Award honoree in 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014."
- Common Sense Mediaopen
"Space.com is a website that provides the most current space-related information, videos, and images. It's a serious and vast resource for space stuff."
Owned by Future plc (company number 03757874), a public limited company incorporated 22 April 1999, listed on London Stock Exchange, active with publishing activities (SIC 58190). Space.com acquired by Future in 2018; US operations via Future US Inc.
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 (013 17.38).
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://space.com/
- 2200https://www.space.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 space.com and not a lookalike like s-pace.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 space.com. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- space.com 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. space.com presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Let's Encrypt · YR1, expiring in 81 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- space.com is 28.4 years old, registered on 2/25/1998 through Lexsynergy Limited. 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 space.com as clean.
- No. space.com is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- space.com resolves to an IP operated by Fastly, 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. space.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.
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