When you land on eoas.ubc.ca, you are looking at the official homepage of the University of British Columbia's Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. It's not a scam or a fake site. The domain has been around since at least 2013, ties back to a major public university, and is not on any blacklists. That said, the biggest red flag here is the lack of HTTPS encryption. For a university website that serves educational content, this is unusual in 2025 and means any information you enter or browse could theoretically be intercepted. Most legitimate educational sites have moved to HTTPS by now, so this stands out as a weakness. The site also doesn't publish a privacy policy or terms of use on its homepage, which is common for many academic pages but still worth noting if you're looking for formal policies. Is eoas.ubc.ca a scam? No, it's clearly a real department site. But is it safe to use? Only for reading public information. Don't log in, fill out forms, or share personal details until they enable HTTPS. For a university site, you would expect better security practices, but the content itself is trustworthy.
In plain English
This is the official website for UBC's Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. It's a legitimate academic site that's been around for over a decade, but the missing HTTPS encryption is a real concern for security-conscious visitors. If you're just reading public information, it's fine, but don't submit any personal data through it.
Where the score comes from
No HTTPS connection is a serious issue for any modern website, even a university department page. While the site does set some browser protections, the lack of encryption means data sent to or from this site isn't secure.
WHOIS data is inaccessible because this is a subdomain of ubc.ca, which is expected for a university department. The domain itself has been around for over a decade, and the operator (UBC) is a well-known public institution.
The site has been archived on the Wayback Machine for 13 years, showing a long and consistent web presence. No blacklists or Google Web Risk flags were detected, which is a solid record for any organization.
This is a university department site, and it clearly identifies itself with an About page, contact information, and links to social media. For this type of site, that level of openness is more than sufficient.
The site is missing a privacy policy and terms of service, which would be a problem for a commercial site. But for an educational institution that doesn't process payments or sensitive user data on its homepage, this is a minor gap, not a red flag.
Email authentication is set up properly, and the site resolves to multiple IPs, typical of a university network. The lack of DNSSEC is common and not concerning here, but the inability to fetch a sitemap or robots.txt suggests some automated access restrictions.
What we checked
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