This site is a verified, authoritative digital asset of the University of Pittsburgh. With decades of history and high traffic, it presents as a highly reliable and safe institutional portal.
We look at six areas. Here's how pitt.edu did in each.
Cross-referenced 46 live signals from Google Safe Browsing, VirusTotal, WHOIS and more on Nov 10, 2026.How we score →
95
Security
The site uses industry-standard encryption and robust mail authentication to protect user communication. It follows modern security practices, including effective protections against common web-based attacks.
98
Identity
This is an established institutional domain with a verifiable 37-year history. Ownership is clearly linked to the University of Pittsburgh, with consistent identification across official channels.
95
Reputation
The site is a high-traffic, authoritative source with a long history of institutional recognition and broad external citation. It is widely considered a primary hub for university operations.
90
Transparency
The site provides clear contact channels and organizational context that align with its role as a public university. Public social media presence reinforces the legitimacy of the institutional identity.
60
Compliance
While the site is a large public institution, the lack of dedicated, easy-to-find legal policy pages is a minor oversight. It maintains appropriate standards for a university, though standard commercial transparency labels are absent.
90
Infrastructure
Managed via institutional network infrastructure, the site exhibits stable and mature technical management. DNS configuration is well-maintained and highly secure.
What we checked
The 46 signals behind this report.
Security & Transport
Certificate Issuer: Neutral
Internet2
Certificate issued by Internet2
Clickjacking Protection: Good
Present
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Google Web Risk: Good
Clean
No threats detected by Google Web Risk
HSTS Header: Good
Present
Site enforces HTTPS via HSTS
Protective DNS: Neutral
Not blocked
Cloudflare's malware-blocking resolver (1.1.1.2) and Quad9 answered normally for this domain. These resolvers refuse domains their threat intelligence lists for malware or phishing, and a scam only days old often isn't listed yet.
SSL Certificate: Good
Valid
Valid certificate, expires in 76 days
Search Cloaking: Neutral
Not detected
Neither a visitor arriving from a Google search nor Google's crawler was sent elsewhere or shown spam that a direct visit wasn't. Cloaking that checks the visitor's network address can't be seen from our server.
Security Headers: Good
3 of 6
Site sets multiple security response headers: HSTS, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options
Server: Neutral
nginx
Web server: nginx
TLS Version: Good
TLS 1.3
Connection uses TLS 1.3
Identity & WHOIS
About Page: Good
Found
Site publishes an About / Team / Company page — a transparency signal that the operator is willing to describe who runs the business.
Branding: Good
Complete
Site has custom branding and social media metadata
Business Disclosure: Neutral
Not found
No dedicated legal-entity disclosure page detected — common and expected outside the EU, but required for commercial sites in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and other EU jurisdictions.
Certificate Identity: Good
Organisation validated (OV)
The certificate names University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus (US), an organisation the certificate authority verified before issuing it. That confirms who holds the certificate, not how they run the site.
Contact Info: Good
Found
Homepage has a contact page link and a phone number
Domain Age: Good
37 years, 4 months
Domain created 1989-06-21 (37 years, 4 months ago)
Domain Expiry: Neutral
2028-07-31
Expires in 628 days
Legal Pages: Warning
Partial
Website is missing either privacy policy or terms of service
Locale: Neutral
Points to US
Prices in $. Phone numbers from US. Certificate issued to an organisation in US. Page language en. Hosting network registered in US.
Infrastructure & DNS
BIMI: Good
Verified Mark Certificate
DigiCert, Inc. checked that "University of Pittsburgh" (US) controls this domain and owns its BIMI email logo as registered trademark 6141639 (US). The Verified Mark Certificate is valid until 2027-04-16.
CAA Record: Good
19 issuer(s)
Domain restricts which CAs can issue certificates: amazon.com, amazonaws.com, amazontrust.com, awstrust.com, certainly.com, digicert.com, emsign.com, globalsign.com, godaddy.com, hubspot.com, letsencrypt.org, pki.goog, sectigo.com, certainly.com, emsign.com, letsencrypt.org, sectigo.com, trust-provider.com, usertrust.com
CDN: Neutral
Fastly
Site is served behind Fastly, which hides the server it runs on. Free plans put any site behind a CDN, so it says nothing about who runs this one.
DMARC Record: Good
p=quarantine
Domain enforces DMARC — unauthenticated mail is quarantined
DNS Blacklists: Neutral
Clean
Not listed by SpamCop, Barracuda and SURBL, the blacklists that answered
DNS Resolution: Good
1 IP(s)
Resolves to: 136.142.34.30
DNSSEC: Good
Enabled
Domain is signed and validated by DNSSEC
Email (MX Records): Good
1 record(s)
Mail servers: pitt-edu.mail.protection.outlook.com.
Hosting Network (ASN): Neutral
AS4130 UPITT-AS - University of Pittsburgh
Hosted on: AS4130 UPITT-AS - University of Pittsburgh (US)
Name Servers: Neutral
2 server(s)
DNS providers: ns4.pitt.edu., ns5.pitt.edu.
Page Load Time: Neutral
634ms
Fast page load, timed once from our server in Europe including the DNS lookup, connection setup and any redirects
SPF Record: Good
Present
Domain has SPF email authentication configured
TLS-RPT: Good
Present
Domain publishes a TLS-RPT record for SMTP TLS failure reporting
Reputation & Reach
Hacker News: Good
100+ stories since 2010
Hacker News readers upvoted links to this site in 14 different years between 2010 and 2026. The most upvoted, "Got food cravings? What’s living in your gut may be responsible" (2022), got 223 points.
Link Authority: Good
8.68/10 (rank #3111)
Among the 100,000 best-linked sites on the web by Open PageRank, which scores how many sites link here and how well linked those sites are in turn, from Common Crawl data.
Open Graph Type: Neutral
website
og:type declared as website
Page Language: Neutral
en
HTML declares lang="en"
Page Title: Neutral
Home | University of Pittsburgh
Real Visitor Traffic: Good
Measured by Chrome
Google's Chrome UX Report publishes data for https://www.pitt.edu, which it only does once enough distinct real Chrome users have visited over the last 28 days.
Sitemap: Good
36 pages
Site maintains a proper sitemap with 36 indexed pages
Social Media Presence: Good
Linked back from YouTube
Homepage links to profiles on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. The YouTube account lists this site as its own, so whoever runs the site runs it too.
Structured Data: Neutral
None found
No structured data markup found
Tranco Rank: Good
Rank #2878
This is a well-known, high-traffic website
Web Archive History: Good
29 years
Earliest archive snapshot from 19961121
Website Status: Good
Online
Website is live and responding
Wikidata Entry: Good
University of Pittsburgh — state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Wikidata, the knowledge base behind Wikipedia, lists this site as the item's official website, and 58 Wikipedia or sister-project articles cover it.
robots.txt: Good
Present
robots.txt has 53 directives
Run this site? Show your score.
Add a trust badge so visitors can see your live score for themselves.
When evaluating institutional websites, the most vital factors are domain longevity and verifiable ownership. As a well-known public research university, pitt.edu shows all the indicators of a trusted, long-standing entity. The domain has been active for over three decades, which is consistent with the web presence of a major academic institution. This contrasts sharply with suspicious sites that often use short-lived registrations to hide their origins.
Visitors should always verify they are on the official university domain when submitting personal information for admissions or alumni services. Because this site is the genuine portal for the University of Pittsburgh, users can proceed with confidence. While one might expect more explicit legal documentation on a commercial shop, this is not standard for educational hubs that focus on academic, research, and institutional reporting. Is pitt.edu a scam? The evidence confirms this is an official organization, and the site functions exactly as expected for a major public university. There are no signs of impersonation or hidden agendas, and its digital footprint is entirely consistent with its public profile.