{
  "id": 5451100,
  "title": "Your AI recommended a store. Is it a scam? (Free API, no auth, transparent heuristics)",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/04/your-ai-recommended-a-store-is-it-a-scam-free-api-no-auth-transparent",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-04T00:07:27.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/edison_flores_6d2cd381b13/your-ai-recommended-a-store-is-it-a-scam-free-api-no-auth-transparent-heuristics-1god"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A free, transparent AI tool has been created to check whether a store or URL is safe to recommend. This domain reputation checker, called UTA (Universal Trust Adapter), uses eight heuristics to analyze a domain and determine if it is trusted, suspicious, or cautious. The service is completely free, does not require an API key or registration, and provides a clear explanation for each decision made. The tool can be used by AI agents that recommend products or stores, as it checks for common scam indicators such as URL shorteners, suspicious top-level domains, typosquatting, domain age, subdomain abuse, HTTP tokens, SSL certificates, and more. While it cannot detect brand-new scams, the checker offers a valuable first line of defense against potential scams.",
  "summary": "The problem AI agents increasingly recommend products, stores, and URLs to users. But when an agent says \"this store looks good,\" there's no automatic check of whether the store is a scam. Commercial services like WHOISXML, IPQualityScore, and CheckPhish sell domain reputation data — but they're paid, require API keys, and are black boxes. You can't see why they flagged a domain. What we built A…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}