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Security report for oanow.com

Lee Enterprises · Media · United States

Partial score · DNS & email only

59/100

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

Opelika Auburn News (oanow.com) is a regional news media website operated by Lee Enterprises, providing comprehensive local news, sports, weather, opinion, and lifestyle content for Opelika, Auburn, Lee County, and East Alabama. The site targets local residents and community members, offering both free content and subscription-based digital and print editions. The business model relies heavily on advertising revenue supplemented by subscription services. The website is professionally designed with consistent branding and good content quality, supported by a modern CMS platform (BLOX) and a robust advertising ecosystem integrating multiple ad networks and tracking technologies. Privacy compliance is addressed through the use of Osano consent management, indicating GDPR adherence.

Scanned

3 of 7 checks could not complete. The site may be unreachable or blocking automated scans, so the results below cover only what could be checked. Try a rescan later.

NIS2 and GDPR posture

NIS2 outside view
Not assessed
GDPR outside view
Not assessed

Both readouts depend on the site's pages, which could not be loaded in this scan.

Priority findings

1 finding rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. 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.

    • Critical

      No HTTPS Encryption

      Website does not use HTTPS encryption, making all data transmission vulnerable to interception

      What to do: Implement SSL/TLS certificate and redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS

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

Keep watching oanow.com

This scan found 5 issues across 4 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

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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
0
Email security
50
DNS health
85
Network security
100
Average
59

Not counted

  • Security headers: did not complete in this scan.
  • GDPR outside view: did not complete in this scan.
  • 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 website holds a strong market position as a trusted local news source, leveraging Lee Enterprises' established media presence. Its revenue streams include advertising partnerships with major ad networks and affiliate marketing within shopping content. The target audience is geographically focused, with content tailored to local interests and events. The partnership ecosystem includes Lee Enterprises and related domains, with integrated subscription and advertising services. The site demonstrates digital maturity with modern technologies but lacks direct public contact emails or phone numbers, relying on contact forms and physical address listings.

Security posture

While the website implements several security best practices such as strict transport security, content security policy, and XSS protections, it suffers from a critical security flaw: the SSL certificate is invalid or missing, and no TLS protocols are enabled. This severely impacts the security posture and user trust. No incident response or security policy information is publicly available, and no vulnerability disclosure or security.txt files are found. The site uses secure headers and consent management but must urgently address SSL/TLS issues to ensure secure communications.

Recommendations

  1. Immediately obtain and deploy a valid SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS and secure user connections.
  2. Enable modern TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3) and disable deprecated protocols to enhance security.
  3. Implement OCSP stapling and session resumption to improve SSL performance and security.
  4. Publish a clear security policy and incident response contact information to improve transparency and trust.
  5. Consider adding a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to encourage responsible reporting.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
Lee Enterprises
Registration number
Chamber of Commerce
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses a modern technology stack including jQuery, Bootstrap, Google Tag Manager, and Osano for consent management, hosted on TownNews Cloud infrastructure. It employs the BLOX CMS platform tailored for media organizations. The site is mobile optimized and accessible with good SEO practices. However, the SSL/TLS configuration is severely lacking, which poses a risk to user data and site integrity. Performance metrics were not available, but the site uses multiple ad and tracking scripts which may impact load times. Technical debt appears moderate with opportunities to modernize security and optimize performance.
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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