No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Is umd.edu legit or a scam?
Official University of Maryland homepage — a legitimate, long-established public research institution with clean security signals and consistent institutional branding.
Analysis Summary
MT Intelligence
umd.edu is the authoritative domain of the University of Maryland, College Park, registered to the university's Division of Information Technology since 1985. Our antivirus network flagged zero detections across 92 engines, and the hosting IP carries zero abuse reports. The page displays professional institutional branding, a standard university navigation structure, and editorial content consistent with a major research university. Business registration confirms active status as a public flagship university founded in 1856. Independent sources including Wikipedia, the Princeton Review, and Maryland State Archives all confirm this as the legitimate official website. No scam reports, complaints, or clone indicators were found.
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 Screenshot 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.
Visual red flags detected in the screenshot
The page presents as the official University of Maryland homepage with consistent institutional branding, professional design quality, and no detectable scam indicators. No urgency tactics, suspicious forms, fake trust badges, or clone signals are visible.
What our vision model saw
4 signalsOfficial University of Maryland branding, logo, and Maryland flag seal are consistently applied throughout the header.
Professional navigation structure with standard university sections (About, Academics, Admissions & Aid, Student Life, Research) matches expected institutional layout.
Red banner header with institutional tagline 'A Top 20 Public Research University' is consistent with UMD's known branding.
Hero image and copy ('Our Research Changes Lives') reflect professional editorial design with no urgency tactics or suspicious overlays.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for umd.edu, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- umd.edu is the official website of the University of Maryland, College Park, a public land-grant research university founded in 1856 and the flagship of the University System of Maryland.
- Domain record activated on 31-Jul-1985; last updated 10-Jul-2025; expires 31-Jul-2026. Registrant: University of Maryland, Division of Information Technology, College Park, MD 20742.
- The university maintains extensive resources warning its own community about phishing and scams targeting students/faculty (e.g., fake account deactivation emails, job scams, government impersonation).
- No scam reports, complaints, or negative reviews found specifically about umd.edu itself across searches on Reddit, ScamAdviser, Trustpilot, or general web.
- Ranked highly by U.S. News & World Report (#10 among public universities per Forbes), Princeton Review, and others; described positively as offering strong academics, research, and opportunities near Washington, D.C.
- Subdomains like umdsurvey.umd.edu and others reviewed positively or neutrally by ScamAdviser as legitimate.
- Official presence confirmed on Wikipedia, state government sites, LinkedIn, Facebook, X/Twitter (@UofMaryland), with consistent branding.
- Wikipediaopen
"The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland."
- Princeton Reviewopen
"Overall, students find that the University of Maryland, College Park, offers 'a great experience with a variety of opportunities that are what you make of them.'"
- Maryland State Archivesopen
"UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK. Founded in 1856. ... web: https://umd.edu/"
Public flagship university of the University System of Maryland, founded 1856, located in College Park, MD. Domain registered to University of Maryland Division of Information Technology since 1985.
Our research confirmed umd.edu as the official, long-established domain of the University of Maryland, College Park. Wikipedia, the Princeton Review, and Maryland State Archives all verify this as the legitimate institutional website. The domain has been registered to the University of Maryland Division of Information Technology since 1985. No scam reports, complaints, or negative reviews were found across consumer-review sites, Reddit, or general web searches. The university is ranked #10 among public universities by Forbes and maintains a strong reputation as a major public research institution.
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 (301.405.1000).
- Links to 4 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://umd.edu/
- 2200https://umd.edu/
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 umd.edu and not a lookalike like u-md.edu.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 umd.edu. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- umd.edu 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. umd.edu presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Let's Encrypt · YE2, expiring in 84 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- No. All 92 antivirus engines in our malware network report umd.edu as clean.
- No. umd.edu is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- umd.edu resolves to an IP operated by Bit Breakfast Ltd in GB (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. umd.edu 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.
- We cache results for 24 hours. Signed-in MalwareTips members can trigger a manual rescan at any time using the "Rescan" button on the report page, which re-runs every check from scratch and refreshes this page.
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