Last Updated on August 17, 2025 by Mathew Diekhake

Here is how we analyze for malware and malicious content to determine its trustworthiness and legitimacy.

Use our website safety and trust checker to find out if a website is malicious in any way (has malware, is a scam, or is safe to use). Here are some insights into our grading system:

Methodology

To determine a website’s safety and legitimacy, we consider five factors:

Note: In addition to our grades, we also show which vendors have chosen to blacklist a website because they consider it malicious.

See also: How to Check Out If a Website Is Legit

Grading Standards

Our professional website authentication grading standards use a 10-point grading scale as follows.

Note: There are hundreds of signals and combinations we analyze before we give a site a Safety Index score and grade. The following are some general guidelines regarding how we grade sites:

Very Safe (9-10)

A Very Safe site isn’t flagged by any security vendor as having malware, spam, defacements, or internal server errors. Moreover, it is clean of parasites and has not been flagged as suspicious, malicious, phishing, or blacklisted by any security vendor. Furthermore, it has minimal unresolved security header and/or protection issues. It also needs a neutral or positive community score. Lastly, a site needs a clean online reputation via URLVoid. A Very Safe grade is a pristine site from a security perspective.

Qualifiers:

  • Minimal or low security risk grade on Sucuri
  • No more than 4 hardening improvements on Sucuri (unique URLs taken into account)
  • No parasites
  • Pristine reputation on VirusTotal
  • Passed 30+ blocklist engines on URLVoid

See all: Very Safe sites

Safe (7-9)

A Safe site may be flagged as suspicious or for phishing by 1 or more security vendors and may have 1 or more instances of potential parasites, but is generally considered a safe site by the vast majority of online security vendors. A site with minor parasites that isn’t flagged as malicious by a security vendor may be graded as Safe. A site with minor issues on Sucuri and a clean reputation on all other platforms may be graded as Safe. A site with minor issues on VirusTotal but a clean reputation on all other platforms may be graded as Safe. A community score on VirusTotal and an online reputation via URLVoid are taken into account.

Qualifiers:

  • Minimal or low security risk grade on Sucuri
  • No parasites
  • Not listed as malicious on VirusTotal
  • Neutral or positive community score on VirusTotal
  • Neutral or positive online reputation on URLVoid

See all: Safe sites

Relatively Safe (5-7)

A Relatively Safe site is flagged as malicious, for malware, or for phishing by minimal security vendors. Its parasites must be of minimal concern. It may also have other minor issues, such as running outdated software that makes it vulnerable to hacks or having 403 errors that block a scan from running. Relatively Safe sites could be more secure and may show some signs of being suspicious to some security vendors, but show minimal signs of being malicious. A VirusTotal community score and URLVoid online reputation are taken into account.

Qualifiers:

  • No worse than a medium security risk grade on Sucuri
  • Minimal parasites
  • Minimal VirusTotal issues
  • Neutral or positive reputation on URLVoid

Note: Sites may still be graded as Relatively Safe even if they weren’t graded as a medium security risks on Sucuri if they have numerous other issues.

See all: Relatively Safe sites

Suspicious (2-5)

A Suspicious site may be flagged by several security vendors as suspicious, malicious, and for malware or phishing. At least one vendor may flag it as malicious or for malware. It may have one or more instances of concerning parasites. It may also have a considerably negative VirusTotal community score and a negative URLVoid online reputation.

Qualifiers:

  • Blacklisted on Sucuri
  • Concerning parasites
  • Listed as malicious by one or more vendors on VirusTotal
  • Listed for malware by one or more vendors on VirusTotal
  • Listed as suspicious by multiple vendors on VirusTotal
  • Bad reputation on URLVoid

See all: Suspicious sites

Malicious (0-2)

A Malicious site may be flagged as suspicious, malicious, and for malware or phishing by numerous security vendors. It may also have 1 or more instances of malicious parasites. It may also have a negative VirusTotal community score and a negative URLVoid online reputation.

Qualifiers:

  • Malware detected on Sucuri
  • Malicious parasites
  • Listed as malicious by numerous VirusTotal vendors
  • Bad reputation on URLVoid

See all: Malicious sites

Disclaimer: When we grade a site’s authenticity and safety, we do it using our cybersecurity knowledge as IT and internet professionals. These guidelines are based on our recommendations and may not be the definitive status of a site.

If a grade needs updating, you can contact us.