Is thebrooklyninstitute.com legit or a scam?
Official website for the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, a verified NYC-based non-profit with over a decade of operation and positive academic reviews.
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
The domain has been active for over 14 years, which aligns perfectly with the organization's founding in 2011. Our analysis confirms it is the official site for a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit, with active tax filings and a physical office in Brooklyn. Independent research shows high ratings from charity evaluators and positive feedback from students on community platforms. There are no malicious detections across our antivirus network or browser blocklists. The site's infrastructure is stable and consistent with a professional educational institution.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for thebrooklyninstitute.com, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Official website of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research (BISR), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2011/2012 by Ajay Singh Chaudhary, offering interdisciplinary humanities and social sciences courses, podcasts, events, and programs for
- Listed on Wikipedia, ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer (EIN 45-4337302, tax-exempt since 2015), Charity Navigator (positive rating and accountability metrics), Idealist.org, and its own social channels (X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn
- Physical address: 68 Jay Street, Unit 425, Brooklyn, NY 11201; phone (718) 422-7767; operates classes in NYC, Chicago, and online; over 13,000 alumni reported.
- FY2024 financials (per ProPublica): ~$1.28M revenue (mostly program services), ~$1.33M expenses, net assets ~$398K; reported one excess benefit transaction in 2024 filing.
- Positive mentions on Reddit for course quality; no scam, fraud, or complaint results across targeted searches on Reddit, general web, or review sites.
- Actively solicits memberships/donations as a legitimate nonprofit; partners with cultural organizations, labor unions, and offers Praxis educational programs.
- Domain age of ~14.5 years (registered ~2011) aligns with founding date; no typosquatting indicators or brand impersonation flags.
- Charity Navigatoropen
"Brooklyn Institute for Social Research has earned a 4/4 Star rating on Charity Navigator."
- Wikipediaopen
"Brooklyn Institute for Social Research (BISR), founded in 2012, is a non-profit interdisciplinary education and research institute based in New York City"
- Reddit (r/NYCbitcheswithtaste)open
"I've taken classes at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and loved it! They have online and in person courses."
EIN 45-4337302; 501(c)(3) tax-exempt since June 2015; registered nonprofit in New York (Brooklyn, NY address: 68 Jay Street #425); files Form 990 annually (latest FY2024 revenue ~$1.28M)
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.
- Contact email on the site's own domain (info@thebrooklyninstitute.com).
- Phone number listed (2015-2025).
- Postal address visible on the page.
- Links to 3 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
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 thebrooklyninstitute.com and not a lookalike like t-hebrooklyninstitute.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 thebrooklyninstitute.com. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- thebrooklyninstitute.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. thebrooklyninstitute.com presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by GlobalSign nv-sa · GlobalSign GCC R6 AlphaSSL CA 2025, expiring in 173 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- thebrooklyninstitute.com is 14.6 years old, registered on 12/6/2011 through Wild West Domains, 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 thebrooklyninstitute.com as clean.
- No. thebrooklyninstitute.com is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- thebrooklyninstitute.com resolves to an IP operated by Google LLC in US (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.
- This is a permanent record of the scan run on July 2, 2026. The verdict and evidence above reflect that scan and do not change on their own. If circumstances around thebrooklyninstitute.com have changed, MalwareTips staff can run a fresh scan, which re-runs every check from scratch and publishes an updated report.
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