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Domain Due Diligence

Report for Family-locator.com

Report Date
October 9, 2025
Recommendation
Caution
Overall Summary
Suspicious
  Why we think so? 

Family-locator.com is a long-running family-tracking site (domain created in 2015) with substantial traffic (~624k visits/month). It uses reputable infrastructure (Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, Stripe for payments) and has valid SSL, so the site is technically legitimate. However, there are two strong trust concerns: a documented 2019 data leak that exposed roughly 280,000 users’ location data, and recurring user complaints about unwanted subscription charges and refunds. No Google Safe Browsing or crypto-blacklist flags were found. Verdict: ⚠️ Suspicious — likely real but handle payments and personal data with caution.

Confidence Score
65%

Risk Insights

🛡️

Major privacy incident on record

  • 2019 database exposure reported by security researchers.
  • Leak reportedly included ~280,000 users' live locations.
  • This increases risk for users and for targeted social engineering.
⚠️

Operationally real but customer-service issues exist

  • Uses Stripe, Google Workspace, Zendesk — typical for legitimate services.
  • Multiple complaints about billing and refunds in app stores/support forums.
  • If you must pay, monitor charges and keep evidence of cancellation requests.

Contradictory Signals

Technical legitimacy and usage scale conflict with serious historical privacy failures and customer-service problems.

Signal A: High traffic, mature domain, reputable infrastructure

Signal B: Documented data leak and repeated billing complaints

Category Scores

Red Flags & Warnings

  • Documented 2019 database leak exposed tens/hundreds of thousands of users' real-time location data, including children — major privacy incident.
  • Multiple user complaints about unexpected subscription charges and denied or difficult refunds on app stores and support forums.
  • Some related subdomains and older site instances were flagged as ‘older / unavailable’ by automated reputation checks, suggesting maintenance/consistency issues.

🔎 Detailed Checks & Analysis

Domain age & registrar

Score: 70/100
Passed

"An older registration (2015) reduces the chance this is a throwaway scam domain, but age alone doesn't guarantee safe practices."

Reason: Domain created in 2015 and registered via GoDaddy suggests long-term presence and continuity.

Technical hygiene (SSL, DNS, hosting)

Score: 75/100
Passed

"SSL is valid (wildcard for *.family-locator.com); DNS shows Cloudflare nameservers and standard MX/TXT records for Google Workspace and Zendesk."

Reason: Valid SSL certificate and use of Cloudflare / Amazon infrastructure indicates competent technical operations.

Third‑party integrations & payments

Score: 70/100
Passed

"Presence of Stripe and Google Analytics suggests conventional payment and telemetry flows; still verify payment receipts and refund paths before purchase."

Reason: Stripe present for payments and standard analytics/tools are in use, which supports normal business processes.

Traffic & popularity

Score: 65/100
Passed

"Large user base can be reassuring, but high traffic also increases impact of any security or billing problems."

Reason: High monthly traffic (~623k) and search-driven visitor share imply a widely-used service.

Reputation & user complaints

Score: 45/100
Failed

"App-store reviews and forum posts describe billing disputes; automated reputation checks list mainly negative user feedback even where scans mark the site technically safe."

Reason: Multiple user reports of unwanted charges and refund difficulties lower trust in customer practices.

Privacy & security history

Score: 30/100
Failed

"The data-exposure event is a high-severity incident for a geolocation product; check whether the vendor published a post-mortem or implemented fixes."

Reason: A 2019 incident exposed real-time location records for ~280,000 users — a significant security breach for a location-tracking service.

Your Next Steps

  • 1

    Avoid entering payment details until you confirm refund and trial policies; if you must subscribe, use a card you can monitor and cancel quickly.

  • 2

    Search App Store / Play Store purchase history and developer responses for the exact app tied to this domain before paying.

  • 3

    If you used the service in the past, check for signs of the 2019 leak (unexpected location-related messages) and rotate any account credentials.

  • 4

    Report unwanted charges to your payment provider and request refunds via the platform (App Store / Google Play) if developer support is unresponsive.

  • 5

    Limit sharing sensitive data (children’s exact locations) with the service until you’re satisfied with its security posture and privacy policy.

Evidence & Citations

🕵🏻 Keep investigating

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