Known-scam lists
We check your site against lists of fake stores and phishing pages that security researchers have already caught and reported. If it's on the list, you see red.
For everyday browsing, not the SOC
Know instantly if a website is safe.
Sitelight adds a small shield to your browser that turns green, yellow, or red for every website you visit. One glance tells you whether it's okay to type a credit card number, and one click tells you why in plain English.
Free tier works with no account. No credit card to try it.
This site looks safe.
etsy.com
- Been around more than 20 years.
- One of the most-visited stores on the web.
- Not on any known scam list.
The problem
The little padlock is lying to you.
Your niece sends you a link to a boutique she swears has the best prices on the boots you've been looking at. You click it. The address bar shows a little padlock. The site looks fine. You reach for your wallet — and then pause. Why is she sending me a link from this weird website?
You're right to pause. More than 8 out of 10 scam websites have a perfectly valid padlock next to their address. The padlock only means the connection between you and the site is private — it says nothing about whether the people running the site are honest. A site that went up last Tuesday to steal credit cards gets the same little padlock as Nordstrom.
The things that actually tell you whether a site is trustworthy are the things you already know to look for: Has this store been around a while? Does anyone else talk about it? Did somebody just make this website last week? The trouble is that answering those questions in the moment means opening five tabs and piecing it together yourself. Sitelight just does it for you and puts the answer on a shield in your toolbar.
How it works
Three colors. One glance.
Every website you visit gets a shield in your toolbar. The color tells you everything you need to know; clicking it tells you why.
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Green
You're on an established site with nothing unusual going on. Go ahead.
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Yellow
Something's a little off. Maybe the site is brand-new, or nobody's heard of it yet. Slow down before you type a password.
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Red
We've seen this one before, and it's bad news. Close the tab. Don't type your card number here.
Click the shield at any time and Sitelight shows you the specific reasons behind the color, in the same plain English.
What Sitelight checks
Six questions, asked for you.
The same questions a careful person would want to answer before typing a card number — just answered in under a second, every time.
How old the site is
The single biggest tell: if a real company has been around for 20 years but its website was registered last month, it isn't really them. We look up the registration date the moment you click.
Is it actually private?
We confirm the connection to the site is encrypted. Not because the padlock means safe — it doesn't — but because its absence is a clear red flag worth telling you about.
Has anyone heard of it?
Using a major internet company's anonymized popularity data, we check whether the site is one people actually visit. A store you've never heard of that nobody else has either is worth a second look.
Lookalike spotting
We watch for the tricks scammers use in web addresses: a zero instead of an 'o', a one instead of an 'l', an extra hyphen. If a site is pretending to be a big brand you know, we flag it.
Regular blocklists
We pull in a fresh list of reported scam websites every hour, so something a researcher caught this morning is already on your shield this afternoon.
Pricing
The shield is free. Forever.
The free tier is the whole point — a clear color for every site you visit, with a plain-English reason behind it. Premium unlocks deeper reports and automatic protection for the people who want it.
Free
$0 / forever
For everyone. The shield, the reason, and an honest answer to "is this site safe?" — with no account and no payment.
- Green / yellow / red shield on every site
- Plain-English explanation in one click
- Works on every site you visit
- No account required
- No ads, ever
Premium
$4.99 / month $39 / year ($3.25/mo effective)
For anyone who wants more than a shield: a full reason behind every color, automatic blocking on the bad ones, and a safer inbox.
- Everything in Free
- Detailed site report: every signal behind the color
- Auto-block red sites — optional, off by default
- Deeper threat detection — Google’s enterprise threat feeds on top of the free sources
- Priority support by email
Cancel any time. No account — purchase is linked to your browser, not your email.
FAQ
Questions people actually ask.
If yours isn't here, email [email protected] and we'll answer it personally.
Is this a replacement for antivirus?
No. Antivirus protects your computer from files. Sitelight protects you from decisions — it tells you whether a website you're about to type information into is likely to be legitimate. The two are complementary. Keep your antivirus; Sitelight runs alongside it, not instead of it.
Do you track what sites I visit?
No. Sitelight sends only the domain name of the tab you're on (like
example.com — not the full web address) and a cryptographic fingerprint of it. We don't log your IP address, we don't link any check to an account, and even in our own records there's nothing that can reconstruct your browsing history. This is explicitly why we built it. What's the difference between this and the padlock icon?
The padlock in your address bar only means the connection between you and the site is encrypted. It doesn't say anything about who runs the site. More than 8 out of 10 scam websites have a valid padlock. Sitelight checks the things the padlock can't — like how old the site is, whether anyone else has heard of it, and whether it shows up on lists of known scams.
Is my credit card information safe to type on a website you marked as green?
A green shield means we haven't found anything unusual: the site is established, nothing suspicious about the address, no known-scam flag. That's a good sign, but a shield is not a guarantee — a brand-new scam could theoretically look legitimate to us in its first few hours. Green means the same level of caution you'd use at a store you've shopped at before. It never means skip your own judgment.
What happens if Sitelight gets it wrong?
It happens — mostly in the form of a legitimate small business flagged yellow because it's brand-new. You'll see the specific reason right in the shield ("registered 3 weeks ago"), so you can judge for yourself. If you're sure a site is fine, one click adds it to your personal trusted list and it stays green for you from then on. If you think we got a site wrong the other way — a scam showing green — email us at [email protected] and we'll look at it the same day.
Do you sell my browsing data? Like WOT did?
No. And because of how the product is built, we couldn't sell it even if we wanted to — we never have your full browsing history on our end. WOT's 2016 scandal was a big part of why we built Sitelight this way. You can read the full privacy policy for the specifics.
Will it slow down my browsing?
No — Sitelight runs in the background and the shield updates in under a second after a page loads. It never blocks a page from opening on the free tier. Premium's auto-block on known-red sites does pause the page, but only for sites already on published scam lists, and you can always click through if you're sure.
How do I turn it off for a site I already trust?
One click, from the shield. Your allowlist is stored locally in your browser — we never see it. You can remove anything from your allowlist later from the options page. No hoops, no hidden undo.
I clicked a link in an email. Is it too late?
The moment the tab loaded, Sitelight checked the site and updated the shield. If you haven't typed anything yet, you're fine — close the tab. If you did type a password, change it on the real site right away. If you typed a card number, call the number on the back of your card and tell them you may have entered it on a scam site.
Is there an Edge, Firefox, or Safari version?
Chrome first. Edge works out of the box because it uses the same extension system as Chrome — you can install Sitelight from the Chrome Web Store in Edge. Firefox and Safari are on the roadmap; email [email protected] if you want to be told when they ship.
How is Premium different from the free tier, really?
The free tier answers the core question — a shield and a reason. Premium is for people who want the full picture: an expanded report on every site, automatic blocking for known-red pages before the page even loads, and a scan of the links in your Gmail or Outlook inbox so suspicious emails get a shield too.
How do I cancel Premium?
One click. Because your purchase is linked to your browser rather than an email account, cancellation happens in the extension's options page. There's no retention dialog, no "are you sure" loops. Your Premium features stay active through the end of the period you paid for.
Privacy, promised in one sentence
Sitelight never sees the full address of the pages you visit.
We never log your IP. We never link checks to your account. Here's exactly what leaves your browser: the domain name of the tab you're on, and a cryptographic fingerprint of it. That's it.
No full web address. No path. No search terms. No subdomain. No tracking cookies. No analytics SDK. The free tier doesn't even have an account.
What's in the network request
{
"etld1_label": "example.com",
"host_hash": "9cae1d..."
}