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Security report for give.org

Council of Better Business Bureaus · Non-profit · United States

Medium risk. 3 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view and SSL/TLS.

Security score

75/100

Risk levelMedium

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

BBB Wise Giving Alliance, operated by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, is a well-established non-profit organization founded in 1995 that provides standards-based charity evaluations to promote trustworthy charitable giving. The website serves donors and charities by offering detailed charity reports, accreditation services, and educational resources. It holds a reputable market position supported by the BBB Accredited Charity Seal and a consistent brand presence. The technical infrastructure leverages modern web technologies including Bootstrap, jQuery, and Sitefinity CMS, hosted on AWS infrastructure, with good mobile optimization and SEO practices. Security posture is solid with HTTPS and secure form handling, though improvements are recommended in DNSSEC and security headers. Privacy compliance is good with a comprehensive privacy policy and GDPR considerations, but lacks a cookie consent mechanism. Overall, the site is professional, trustworthy, and content-rich, targeting a general audience interested in safe charitable giving.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of give.org. View the latest report

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
53/ 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

3 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. GDPR outside view

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

    • High

      No Cookie Policy found

      GDPR requires clear information about cookie usage

      What to do: Add a dedicated cookie policy explaining cookie usage and purposes

    • 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

  2. SSL/TLS

    TLS encrypts the connection and proves the site is really yours. Weak or expiring certificates trigger browser warnings and put traffic at risk.

    • High

      Weak Protocols Supported

      Server supports weak protocols: TLSv1.1

      What to do: Disable TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and all SSL versions

      • CWE-327
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V12.1.1

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Keep watching give.org

This scan found 20 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.

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

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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
77
Security headers
80
Email security
70
DNS health
70
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
Average
75

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 organization operates in the non-profit sector focusing on charity evaluation and accreditation. Its business model centers on providing free charity reports and optional licensing of the BBB Accredited Charity Seal. The target audience includes donors seeking trustworthy charities and charities aiming for accreditation. The website demonstrates strong trust indicators such as long domain age, BBB affiliation, and social media engagement. Revenue streams likely include accreditation fees and donations. The partnership ecosystem includes BBB.org and GiveSafely. Growth indicators include regular publications and active news updates. Strategic observations highlight the importance of maintaining transparency and expanding digital engagement to enhance donor trust.

Security posture

The website exhibits a mature security posture with HTTPS enforced and clientTransferProhibited domain status. No exposed sensitive data or vulnerable libraries were detected. However, the absence of DNSSEC and security headers like CSP and HSTS represents areas for enhancement. No explicit incident response or security policy pages were found, indicating potential gaps in transparency and readiness. Form inputs are validated and use AJAX for submissions, reducing risk of injection attacks. Overall, the security maturity is good but could benefit from formalized policies and additional technical controls to align with best practices and compliance requirements.

Recommendations

  1. Enable DNSSEC to improve domain name system security and prevent spoofing.
  2. Implement comprehensive security headers including Content Security Policy (CSP), HSTS, and X-Frame-Options.
  3. Publish explicit security and incident response policies with dedicated contact channels.
  4. Add a cookie consent mechanism to comply with privacy regulations and enhance user transparency.
  5. Regularly audit third-party scripts and dependencies to mitigate vulnerabilities.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Council of Better Business Bureaus
Description
BBB Wise Giving Alliance (BBB’s Give.org) is a standards-based charity evaluator that seeks to verify the trustworthiness of publicly-soliciting charities.
Key services
Charity evaluation and accreditation, Charity reports and ratings, Donor education and tips, Charity accreditation seal licensing
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Bootstrap 4, jQuery 3.7.1, Google Analytics, Constant Contact, Sitefinity CMS
Frameworks
Bootstrap
Platforms
AWS (DNS via awsdns), Sitefinity CMS
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
80/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enabled
  • Client transfer prohibited domain status
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Secure form submission via AJAX

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Marketing tools
Constant Contact
Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website is professionally designed and well maintained.
  2. Content is comprehensive and focused on charity evaluation and donor education.
  3. Multiple trust signals including BBB accreditation and social media presence.
  4. No signs of malicious or suspicious activity.
  5. Forms use AJAX with validation and privacy notices.
  6. No explicit cookie consent mechanism detected.
  7. No direct contact emails or phone numbers visible on homepage; contact form available.
  8. No explicit security or incident response policies published.
  9. Good use of modern web technologies and analytics.
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses a modern tech stack with Bootstrap 4 for responsive design, jQuery for DOM manipulation, and Sitefinity CMS for content management. Hosting is on AWS infrastructure, indicated by DNS nameservers. Performance is moderate with asynchronous loading of analytics and recaptcha scripts. SEO is supported by meta tags and Open Graph data. Accessibility is basic but could be improved with ARIA roles and semantic HTML. The site includes AJAX-based newsletter subscription forms integrated with Constant Contact. Technical debt appears low, but opportunities exist to modernize JavaScript usage and enhance security configurations.
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

Earlier scans of this domain

  1. 75/100Medium28 findingsView report
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