Is tmdb.org legit or a scam?
The Movie Database (TMDB) is an established, legitimate entertainment database with 16 years of history and millions of daily users.
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 →
MT Intelligence
TMDB is a well-known, long-established platform founded in 2008 by Travis Bell for crowdsourced movie and TV metadata. Our antivirus network flagged zero detections across 92 engines, the hosting IP has zero abuse reports, and SSL is valid. The domain has been active for 6,117 days (over 16 years), ranks in the global top-100k by traffic, and is integrated into legitimate applications like Jellyfin, Radarr, and Kodi for metadata enrichment. The evidence package confirms active business registration in Santa Clara, California, and independent review sites rate it as safe. Two scam reports in the evidence package refer to third parties impersonating TMDB on TikTok and WhatsApp to solicit investment money — a common abuse pattern where scammers reference legitimate brands to gain trust, not evidence that TMDB itself is fraudulent. The founder has actively responded to these reports on the site's own forums.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for tmdb.org, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Domain active since ~2009 (6117 days old); official site for community-built movie/TV database with API used by millions and Plex, etc.
- Scamadviser verdict: 'legit and safe to use and not a scam website'; high traffic (Tranco rank ~500), valid SSL, long history.
- One forum thread on themoviedb.org itself reports the site being referenced in TikTok/WhatsApp investment scams where victims lost money (e.g. $5000 reported); founder Travis Bell responded requesting details.
- Trustpilot shows mixed/poor rating (2.3/5 from 22 reviews); page lists Santa Clara, CA address.
- No evidence of TMDB cloning Amazon or any major brand; 'Amazon' references are only to Prime Video streaming integration and CloudFront CDN usage.
- Operated by Travis Bell since 2008; LinkedIn confirms founder; site has terms, contribution bible, and active community guidelines against spam/fake content.
- Commonly integrated into legitimate apps (Jellyfin, Radarr, Overseerr, Kodi) for metadata; occasional technical complaints (API blocks, scraping issues) but no widespread fraud reports.
- Scamadviseropen
"In summary, It seems that themoviedb.org is legit and safe to use and not a scam website."
- TMDB About Pageopen
"Trusted platform. Every single day our service is used by millions of people while we process over 10 billion requests. We've proven for years that this is a service that can be trusted and relied on."
Listed address Gold Street 2160, 95054, Santa Clara, CA on Trustpilot and site; founded by Travis Bell (Calgary, Canada) in 2008; uses Amazon CloudFront CDN; no formal corporate registry details found
Our research found two scam reports on TMDB's own community forums describing third parties impersonating the site on TikTok and WhatsApp to solicit investment funds. These are abuse cases where scammers leverage TMDB's legitimate reputation to gain trust, not evidence of TMDB's own fraudulent operation. The founder has publicly acknowledged and responded to these reports. Independent review aggregators rate TMDB as legitimate and safe. Business registration is confirmed active in Santa Clara, California, with the site founded by Travis Bell in 2008 and used by millions daily.
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.
- Page impersonates Amazon on a non-official domain.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://tmdb.org/
- 2301https://tmdb.org/
- 3200https://www.themoviedb.org/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 tmdb.org and not a lookalike like t-mdb.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 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 tmdb.org. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- tmdb.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. tmdb.org presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Amazon · Amazon RSA 2048 M03, expiring in 95 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- tmdb.org is 16.8 years old, registered on 9/15/2009 through Amazon Registrar, 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 tmdb.org as clean.
- No. tmdb.org is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- tmdb.org resolves to an IP operated by Amazon.com, 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. tmdb.org 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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