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Security report for golem.de

Golem.de · Media · Germany

Medium risk. 5 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view and Security headers.

Security score

64/100

Risk levelMedium

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

Golem.de is a well-established German IT news website targeting IT professionals and technology enthusiasts. It offers news, analysis, and a subscription service called Golem pur that allows users to access content without advertising and tracking cookies. The website demonstrates a professional design and consistent branding, with clear privacy and cookie policies that comply with GDPR requirements. The technical infrastructure includes custom consent management scripts and is hosted on syseleven.de, a reputable hosting provider. The site is mobile optimized and provides a moderate performance experience. Security posture is adequate with consent mechanisms in place, but lacks explicit security headers and published security policies. Overall, the website is trustworthy and professionally maintained, with room for improvement in security transparency and accessibility.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
40/ 100 · High
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

5 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.

    • Critical

      EU business without adequate privacy measures

      EU businesses are subject to strict GDPR requirements

      What to do: Implement comprehensive GDPR compliance including privacy policy, cookie consent, and data protection measures

    • 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. 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 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';…

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

Keep watching golem.de

This scan found 19 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
100
Security headers
30
Email security
50
DNS health
65
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
40
Average
64

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

Breach exposure

Leaked credentials and lookalike domains from OffSeq Breach. The counts are free; the detailed lists are paid add-ons.

Dark web exposure

Add-on

Leaked records that mention golem.de, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
653
Employees
0
Customers
619
Third parties
34
Weak passwords
20%

13 subdomains affected

See the 10 newest leaked credentials

A one-off add-on to this report that lists the most recent identifier and password pairs OffSeq Breach holds for golem.de.

Select it in the checkout above.

Breach keeps ingesting new leaks, so these numbers can grow between scans.

Technical appendix

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

Business context

Business profile

Golem.de occupies a strong position in the German technology media sector, leveraging an advertising-supported business model supplemented by a subscription offering for privacy-conscious users. Its target audience is IT professionals and technology enthusiasts, and it provides key services such as IT news reporting and technology analysis. The company maintains consistent branding and trust indicators such as clear legal disclosures and privacy policies. While no direct contact information or social media links were found on this page, the site integrates with internal domains for consent management and subscription handling. The business model is sustainable with diversified revenue streams and a clear focus on user privacy options.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a moderate security maturity level with GDPR-compliant cookie consent mechanisms and no visible exposed sensitive data. However, it lacks published security policies, incident response information, and vulnerability disclosure mechanisms such as security.txt. Security headers are not detected in the provided data, which is a potential area for improvement. The absence of direct contact channels for security incidents reduces incident response readiness. Overall, the security posture is adequate for a media website but could be enhanced by adopting best practices in security transparency and header implementation.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and verify HTTP security headers including Content-Security-Policy, Strict-Transport-Security, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options.
  2. Publish a dedicated security policy and incident response contact information to improve transparency and readiness.
  3. Add a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to facilitate responsible reporting of security issues.
  4. Enhance accessibility features to improve compliance and user experience for all users.
  5. Improve SEO by adding structured data (JSON-LD) and Open Graph metadata for better content discoverability.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Golem.de
Description
Golem.de is a German IT news website providing professional news and information technology content targeted at IT professionals and enthusiasts.
Key services
IT news reporting, Technology analysis, Subscription service (Golem pur) for ad-free experience
Content quality
good
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
JavaScript, CSS, woff2 fonts, Custom consent management script
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
basic
SEO
basic

Security

Observed score
70/100
Good practices seen
  • Consent management implemented
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML

Analytics and tracking

Tracking level
extensive
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Transparency
basic

Site quality

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

Key observations

  1. Website uses a custom cookie consent mechanism with detailed user options.
  2. Clear separation of advertising-supported and subscription-based access.
  3. No direct contact emails or phone numbers found on this page.
  4. No security.txt or explicit security policy found.
  5. No social media links detected on this page.
  6. No forms present on this consent page.
  7. No Open Graph or JSON-LD structured data detected in the HTML head.
  8. Scripts loaded include a custom consent script and a wrapper messaging script from cmp-cdn.golem.de.
  9. Fonts are self-hosted with preload hints for performance.
  10. Meta robots tag set to 'noindex' indicating this page is not intended for search engine indexing.
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses modern web technologies including JavaScript, CSS, and self-hosted web fonts with preload optimizations. It employs a custom consent management solution integrated with a CMP CDN domain. Hosting is provided by syseleven.de, a known German hosting provider. The site is mobile optimized and has a moderate performance profile. However, no CMS or major frameworks are explicitly detected, suggesting a custom or lightweight platform. There is no evidence of advanced SEO metadata or structured data, which could be improved. The technical implementation is solid but could benefit from enhanced security headers and accessibility improvements.
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

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