No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Is ualberta.ca legit or a scam?
This looks safe to use.
Official University of Alberta site with 25-year-old domain, clean scans, and active warnings about impersonator domains.
Analysis Summary
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site.
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 website for the University of Alberta with no visual indicators of scamming or malicious intent.
What our vision model saw
5 signalsProfessional layout with high-quality typography and graphics
Official University of Alberta branding and logo present
Standard academic navigation menu including Admissions, Research, and Faculties
No deceptive urgency tactics or fake trust badges visible
Clean, functional design consistent with a legitimate educational institution
Intelligence
The domain ualberta.ca has been registered since October 2000 and matches the real University of Alberta founded in 1908. Our antivirus network returned zero detections and the hosting IP shows no abuse history. The page displays proper university branding, navigation, and academic content with no login forms or urgency tactics. The evidence package confirms this is the authoritative domain and notes the university actively warns the public about lookalike domains such as ualberta-ca.com. Business registration records list the institution as an active Canadian charity with a verifiable CRA number.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for ualberta.ca, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- ualberta.ca is the official domain of the University of Alberta, a top-tier public research institution in Canada.
- The domain has been registered since October 2000 and represents an entity founded in 1908.
- The university actively warns users about phishing and typosquatting domains such as 'ualberta-ca.com' and 'ulberta.ca'.
- Official university communications and student portals (like Bear Tracks) are hosted on this domain or its subdomains.
- The institution is a registered charity and regulated employer in Canada with verifiable tax and business identification numbers.
- University of Alberta (Official)open
"Fraudulent Domain Addresses – the domain addresses on the email communications and PO's are intentionally and slightly altered to appear as part of the university domain. Examples follow: ualberta-ca.com, ualberta-ca.org..."
- University of Alberta (Official)open
"Several members of the university community have reported receiving an email with what appears to be an offer of fraudulent part-time employment or work-study opportunities."
- Wikipediaopen
"The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908... ranked 81st in the world, and fourth in Canada."
Registered as 'The Governors of the University of Alberta' with CRA Business Number 10810 2831.
Our research located two official University of Alberta pages that warn the community about fraudulent emails and purchase-order scams using slightly altered domains such as ualberta-ca.com. Wikipedia confirms the university's founding in 1908 and its ranking as 81st globally. No scam reports or consumer complaints were found targeting the legitimate ualberta.ca domain itself. Business records show the institution is registered as an active Canadian charity with a verifiable CRA number.
Domain Timeline
- Oct 4, 2000Domain registered
First appeared in WHOIS records — 26 years old today.
- Jul 13, 2026Latest security review — Reviewed as safe
This scan re-ran every check and found no active threat signals.
ualberta.ca 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 · referencedThe plumbing behind the site — who registered it, how it’s encrypted, where it’s hosted, and where it links out. A valid certificate or a calm server doesn’t mean the business is honest — scam sites pass these checks too. Use this to corroborate the verdict, not to overturn it.
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.
- Links to 6 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://ualberta.ca/
- 2301https://www.ualberta.ca/
- 3301http://www.ualberta.ca/en/
- 4301https://www.ualberta.ca/en/
- 5301http://www.ualberta.ca/en/index.html
- 6200https://www.ualberta.ca/en/index.html
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 ualberta.ca and not a lookalike like u-alberta.ca.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
This is the official website of the University of Alberta. The domain is 25.8 years old with clean security scans and the university itself publishes warnings about fake domains impersonating it.
Safety FAQ
Common questions, 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 ualberta.ca, so it appears legitimate. All 92 antivirus engines we queried report it clean, it ranks among the world's most-visited sites, and the domain is 25.8 years old, registered on October 4, 2000 — established domains are far less likely to be scams. Even so, always double-check the exact address in your browser, because phishing emails routinely spoof real, trusted domains like this one.
- ualberta.ca passed our automated checks with a trust score of 95/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged it at the time of the last scan, and its signals line up with an established, legitimate site. Treat any unexpected login prompt or payment request on it with the same caution you would anywhere.
- Yes — and this is worth understanding. Even trustworthy domains get spoofed in phishing emails (a fake message that only looks like it's from ualberta.ca), and legitimate sites are occasionally compromised on specific pages. A clean verdict means the site itself checks out today; it does not mean every email or link claiming to be from ualberta.ca is genuine. Always reach the site by typing the address yourself rather than clicking links in unexpected messages.
- No — all 92 antivirus and blocklist engines in our malware network currently report ualberta.ca as clean. That's a good sign, though antivirus coverage is only one of the many signals we weigh, and brand-new scam sites can appear clean before vendors catch up.
- No — ualberta.ca is not currently on the major browser blocklist feeds that Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge rely on. Note that blocklists can lag behind brand-new scam domains, so "not listed" is reassuring but not a guarantee on its own.
- ualberta.ca is 25.8 years old, registered on October 4, 2000 through easyDNS Technologies Inc.. A multi-year registration history is one of the stronger signals against a scam, though it's never a guarantee on its own — established domains can still be misused.
- Yes — ualberta.ca presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by GlobalSign nv-sa · GlobalSign RSA OV SSL CA 2018, valid for another 152 days. Important caveat: SSL only encrypts the connection between you and the site — it does not verify who runs it. Almost all scam sites now have valid SSL too, so a padlock alone never means "safe".
- ualberta.ca resolves to an IP operated by Amazon Technologies Inc. in US (Data Center/Web Hosting/Transit). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad — but hosting that doesn't match a brand's claimed country, or that sits on networks known for abuse, is one of the many signals we weigh alongside the verdict above.
- Yes — ualberta.ca ranks in the global top 100,000 most-visited sites, which means it has substantial real-world traffic. Genuine popularity doesn't automatically make a site safe, but throwaway scam domains almost never reach this level of traffic, so it's a meaningful point in the site's favour.
- This report is a record of the scan run on July 13, 2026, and the verdict reflects that point in time. Scam sites change fast — they can go live, get flagged, or vanish within days — so if you believe something about ualberta.ca has changed, MalwareTips staff can run a fresh scan that re-checks every signal from scratch and republishes an updated verdict.
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