Skip to main content

Security report for berkeleyscanner.com

The Berkeley Scanner · Media · United States

Medium risk. 4 critical or high findings in Security headers and GDPR outside view.

Security score

72/100

Risk levelMedium

0–100, higher is better. How it is calculated

The Berkeley Scanner is an independent, reader-supported local news website focused on delivering timely and comprehensive crime and safety news for Berkeley, California. The site is led by award-winning journalist Emilie Raguso and serves a community audience interested in local public safety updates. The business model is primarily membership and reader-driven, positioning the site as a trusted local media source. Technically, the website is built on the Ghost CMS platform, leveraging modern analytics and marketing tools such as Google Analytics, Plausible, and Wisepops. The site is mobile-optimized and well-structured, providing a good user experience with clear navigation and professional design. Security posture is strong with HTTPS enforced and some security headers present, though there is room for improvement in implementing additional security policies and formal vulnerability disclosure mechanisms. Privacy compliance is limited, with no explicit privacy or cookie policies detected, which could be a risk area. The absence of WHOIS data for the domain is a notable concern, as it raises questions about domain registration transparency, although the website content and technical setup appear legitimate. Overall, the site is a valuable community resource with good technical and security foundations but should enhance privacy and transparency practices to improve trust and compliance.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
68/ 100 · Medium
Checks completed
7of 7

NIS2 Art. 21(2)

  1. (a) Risk analysis and security policies: Not visible from outside
  2. (b) Incident handling: One indicator
  3. (c) Business continuity, backups and crisis management: Not visible from outside
  4. (d) Supply chain security: Not visible from outside
  5. (e) Secure acquisition, development and maintenance, including vulnerability handling: Partly checked
  6. (f) Assessing the effectiveness of security measures: Not visible from outside
  7. (g) Cyber hygiene and security training: Not visible from outside
  8. (h) Cryptography and encryption: Partly checked
  9. (i) HR security, access control and asset management: One indicator
  10. (j) Multi-factor authentication and secured communications: Not visible from outside

This scan rated NIS2 with an earlier keyword method that is no longer shown; rescan for the per-article view. Risk management, continuity, supply chain, training, MFA, management oversight (Art. 20) and incident reporting (Art. 23) need internal evidence, and Guard cannot tell whether NIS2 applies to this organisation.

GDPR is indicative only, based on publicly visible signals: Articles 7, 12, 13 and 32 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive. Not a certification or legal assessment.

Priority findings

4 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. Security headers

    Security headers are instructions your web server sends to every visitor’s browser. Missing ones leave visitors more exposed to attacks such as clickjacking and injected scripts.

    • High

      Missing Strict-Transport-Security header

      Forces HTTPS connections

      What to do: Add "Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"

      • CWE-319
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V3.4.1
    • High

      Missing X-Frame-Options header

      Prevents clickjacking attacks

      What to do: Add "X-Frame-Options: DENY" or "X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN"

    • High

      Missing Content-Security-Policy header

      Controls resources the browser is allowed to load

      What to do: Implement a Content-Security-Policy appropriate for your application

      • ASVS V3.4.3
      • OWASP Secure Headers: OWASP Secure Headers Project recommends Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; form-action 'self'; base-uri 'self'; object-src 'none';…

  2. GDPR outside view

    These are the privacy signals visitors and data protection authorities look for under GDPR.

    • High

      No Cookie Consent Banner found

      GDPR requires explicit consent for non-essential cookies

      What to do: Implement a cookie consent banner that appears on first visit

Need hands-on remediation? Email guard@offseq.com

Keep watching berkeleyscanner.com

This scan found 21 issues across 6 checks. Monitoring re-runs those checks daily, emails you when something material changes and records each fix, so you can show progress.

Daily monitoring

Recommended

€25per month

  • TLS certificates and expiry
  • DNS records
  • SPF, DKIM and DMARC
  • Security headers
  • GDPR and NIS2 posture
  • Exposed services
  • Third-party trackers
  • Security score drift

Email alerts on material changes and an exportable JSON history of every change.

Billed monthly to your card. Cancel anytime. The full timeline opens with your unlock code.

Full report

€39.90one-time

  • The complete analysis as a PDF you can cite
  • Email delivery with an unlock code
  • Lifetime access to this report

Prices incl. 21% VAT. Secure checkout by Mollie; sold by SEQ SIA, Latvia.

Results by check

Each check with its score, findings and the evidence it collected.

How this score is calculated

The security score runs 0–100, higher is better. It is the plain average of the security checks that completed in this scan, each counted equally. A check that could not run is left out: it counts neither as a pass nor as a fail.

Counted in this score

SSL/TLS
95
Security headers
15
Email security
75
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
68
Average
72

Not counted

  • NIS2 outside view: Re-weights evidence from the TLS, email, DNS, network and hygiene checks, so counting it would count that evidence twice. Shown on its own.
  • OffSeq Observations: An AI reading of the site, useful context but not reproducible evidence. Shown on its own.

Findings that cap the score at 49

Each of these is serious on its own, so while any is present the site cannot rate better than high risk, however good the other checks are.

  • The certificate is not trusted by browsers
  • The website is not served over HTTPS
  • A database, remote desktop, file-sharing or Telnet service is reachable from the internet
  • The page loads a script from a compromised source
  • The domain registration has expired
  • SPF authorises every server to send mail as the domain

Partial scans

When the site blocks Guard or most checks cannot run, the score covers only the checks that ran (usually DNS and email), is capped at 75 and is shown as partial, without a risk level.

Risk levels

  • Critical0–25
  • High26–49
  • Medium50–75
  • Low76–100

Technical appendix

Business context, site observations and technical notes gathered during the scan, and the standards behind each reference.

Business context

Business profile

The Berkeley Scanner operates in the media sector as a small, independent news publisher specializing in crime and safety reporting for Berkeley, CA. Its competitive advantage lies in its local focus, award-winning editorial leadership, and a member-supported business model that fosters community trust and engagement. Revenue streams likely include memberships and possibly donations or sponsorships. The target customer segment is local residents and stakeholders interested in public safety and community affairs. The website's partnership ecosystem includes integrations with analytics and marketing service providers but no identified business partners or subsidiaries. Growth indicators include frequent content updates and active community interaction via comments. Strategic observations suggest the site could benefit from formalizing privacy and security policies and clarifying domain registration details to strengthen credibility.

Security posture

The Berkeley Scanner demonstrates a mature security posture with HTTPS enforced and use of security headers such as Referrer-Policy. The site avoids exposing sensitive data and uses asynchronous loading for third-party scripts to reduce performance impact. However, it lacks a Content Security Policy and a published security.txt or vulnerability disclosure page, which are best practices for transparency and incident response readiness. No critical vulnerabilities or exposed credentials were detected in the analyzed content. Privacy compliance gaps exist due to missing privacy and cookie policies and consent mechanisms. Incident response contact information is absent, limiting the ability to report security issues. Overall, the security maturity is good but could be improved by adopting formal policies and disclosure mechanisms.

Recommendations

  1. Publish a comprehensive privacy policy and cookie policy with clear GDPR compliance statements.
  2. Implement a Content Security Policy (CSP) header to mitigate cross-site scripting and related attacks.
  3. Create and publish a security.txt file to provide clear vulnerability disclosure and incident response contacts.
  4. Add visible and verified contact information for business and security inquiries to enhance trust.
  5. Investigate and clarify domain registration status to ensure transparency and legitimacy.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
The Berkeley Scanner
Description
The Berkeley Scanner brings timely, comprehensive crime and safety news to Berkeley, CA. Editor-in-chief: Award-winning veteran news reporter Emilie Raguso.
Key services
Daily crime and safety news reporting, Community updates, Member subscriptions
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Ghost CMS 6.2, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Plausible Analytics, Stripe (payment processing), Wisepops (popups), Diffuser (email marketing), Sodo Search
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Use of Google Tag Manager and Analytics with async loading

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Plausible Analytics
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Tracking pixels
Plausible Analytics, Wisepops, Diffuser
Marketing tools
Wisepops, Diffuser
Transparency
basic

Site quality

Design
good
User experience
good
Content relevance
excellent
Navigation
good
Professionalism
good
Trustworthiness
high

Key observations

  1. Website is an independent local news source focused on Berkeley, CA crime and safety.
  2. Content is updated regularly with detailed articles authored by Emilie Raguso.
  3. No explicit privacy, cookie, or terms of service pages detected in the provided content.
  4. No direct contact emails or phone numbers found in the HTML content.
  5. Uses multiple analytics and marketing tools, but no aggressive tracking or advertising detected.
  6. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure information found.
  7. No signs of WAF or content blocking; site fully accessible.
  8. WHOIS data unavailable, raising questions about domain registration transparency.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on the Ghost CMS platform version 6.2, indicating a modern and maintained content management system. It uses a combination of Google Analytics, Plausible Analytics, and Google Tag Manager for data collection and marketing, along with Wisepops for popups and Diffuser for email marketing. The site loads scripts asynchronously and defers non-critical JavaScript to optimize performance. Mobile optimization is good, with responsive design and viewport meta tags. SEO is supported by proper meta tags, Open Graph, Twitter cards, and JSON-LD structured data describing the website and publisher. Accessibility is basic but could be enhanced with additional ARIA attributes and semantic markup. Hosting provider details are not explicitly identified. Overall, the technical infrastructure is solid with opportunities for further optimization and security hardening.
Standards and sources

Reference chips under each finding point to the standard, regulation or specification the finding relates to. They are taken from the official datasets below and mapped conservatively: a finding with no defensible link shows none. NIS2 and GDPR references mark where a finding is relevant evidence, not a compliance verdict. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2690 binds digital infrastructure and digital service providers; for other entities it is the most detailed public reading of the Article 21 measures. WCAG, EN 301 549, European Accessibility Act and Web Accessibility Directive references name the requirement an automated accessibility rule relates to; they are not a conformance verdict.

Retrieved 2026-10-25

Reviews of this site

Share your experience with berkeleyscanner.com. Every review is verified by email and published after moderation.

Overall rating
Select a rating
4000 characters remaining

We’ll email you to confirm your review and keep your details private.

Community rating

No published reviews yet. Be the first to review berkeleyscanner.com.

Feedback on this report

Rate this report, add an optional comment, and tell us if you want a security specialist to follow up.

Overall report quality
Select a rating
2000 characters remaining

We only use your feedback to improve Guard reports. Contact details are never shared.