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Is aclanthology.org a Scam? Security Check Results - ASSOC. OF COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS Reviews

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Is aclanthology.org Safe? Security Analysis for ASSOC. OF COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS

Check if aclanthology.org is a scam or legitimate. Free security scan and reviews.

EducationUnited Statessmall
Hugo 0.140.2Bootstrap 4.2.1jQuery 3.3.1Popper.js 1.14.6FontAwesome 5.7.2+1 more
Analyzed 9/7/2025Completed 3:20:37 AM
16
Security Score
CRITICAL RISK

Security scan incomplete. 4 out of 9 security checks failed to complete. The website may be inaccessible or protected by security measures. Please retry the scan or verify the website is accessible.

AI Summary

The ACL Anthology is a specialized digital archive managed by the Association of Computational Linguistics, hosting over 113,000 research papers in computational linguistics and natural language processing. It serves an academic and research audience, providing open access to scholarly materials with clear licensing under Creative Commons. The website is built using modern static site generation technology (Hugo) and frontend frameworks such as Bootstrap and jQuery, hosted by Bluehost. The platform demonstrates good technical maturity with mobile responsiveness and clear navigation, though performance is moderate. From a security perspective, the site uses HTTPS and has domain transfer protections in place, but lacks DNSSEC and security headers, which are recommended for enhanced security. No explicit privacy, cookie, or terms of service policies are present, indicating a gap in compliance and transparency. No contact information or incident response details are provided, which limits user support and security communication. Overall, the ACL Anthology website is a trustworthy and professional academic resource with excellent content quality and business credibility. However, it would benefit from improved privacy compliance, security hardening, and clearer user communication regarding policies and contact channels.

Detected Technologies

Hugo 0.140.2Bootstrap 4.2.1jQuery 3.3.1Popper.js 1.14.6FontAwesome 5.7.2SortableJS 1.15.0

🧠AI Business Intelligence

Technology stack, business insights, and market analysis powered by AI.

Business Intelligence

Market & Strategic Analysis

The ACL Anthology occupies a leading position as a non-profit academic digital library in the computational linguistics domain. Its business model focuses on providing open access to research papers, supported by a volunteer team. The target audience includes researchers, academics, and practitioners in natural language processing. The organization is US-based and relatively young, founded in 2020, but leverages a large corpus of historical and current research. The platform's partnership ecosystem includes GitHub for code hosting and Google Groups for mailing list communication. The absence of commercial advertising or tracking indicates a focus on academic integrity and user privacy.

Security Posture Analysis

Comprehensive Security Assessment

The website demonstrates a moderate security posture with HTTPS enabled and domain transfer protections. However, the lack of DNSSEC and absence of security headers such as Content Security Policy, HSTS, and X-Frame-Options represent areas for improvement. No vulnerability disclosure or incident response information is published, which could hinder timely security communication. The site does not collect user data via forms beyond a search input, reducing attack surface. Overall, the security maturity is adequate for an academic archive but could be enhanced to align with best practices and compliance requirements.

Strategic Recommendations

Priority Actions for Security Improvement

1

Enable DNSSEC on the domain to protect against DNS spoofing and improve domain security.

Observations

AI-powered comprehensive website and business analysis.

AI-Enhanced Website Analysis

Business Insights

Company:

ASSOC. OF COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS

Description:

The ACL Anthology hosts a large collection of papers (113,119) on computational linguistics and natural language processing, serving as a digital archive and resource for the research community.

Key Services:
Hosting and providing access to research papersProviding RSS feeds for latest papersOffering BibTeX downloads of the full anthology
Content Quality:

excellent

Branding:

consistent

Technical Stack

Technologies:
Hugo 0.140.2Bootstrap 4.2.1jQuery 3.3.1Popper.js 1.14.6FontAwesome 5.7.2SortableJS 1.15.0
Frameworks:
Bootstrap
Performance:

moderate

Mobile:

good

Accessibility:

basic

SEO:

good

Security Assessment

Security Score:
70/100
Best Practices:
  • HTTPS is implied by URL (https://aclanthology.org/)
  • Domain status clientTransferProhibited

Analytics & Tracking

Tracking Level:minimal
Privacy Compliance:poor

Advertising & Marketing

Transparency Level:poor

Website Quality Assessment

Design Quality:good
User Experience:good
Content Relevance:excellent
Navigation Clarity:good
Professionalism:good
Trustworthiness:high

Key Observations

1

Website is a well-maintained academic digital library for computational linguistics.

🛡️Security Headers

HTTP security headers analysis and recommendations.

Security Headers

HTTP security headers analysis

15/100
Score

Missing Strict-Transport-Security header

HIGH

Forces HTTPS connections

Missing X-Frame-Options header

HIGH

Prevents clickjacking attacks

Missing X-Content-Type-Options header

MEDIUM

Prevents MIME type sniffing

Missing Content-Security-Policy header

HIGH

Controls resources the browser is allowed to load

Missing X-XSS-Protection header

MEDIUM

Legacy XSS protection (deprecated but still recommended)

Missing Referrer-Policy header

LOW

Controls referrer information sent with requests

Missing Permissions-Policy header

MEDIUM

Controls browser features and APIs

Sensitive data may be cached

LOW

Cache-Control header should include "no-store" for sensitive pages

👤GDPR Compliance

Privacy and data protection assessment under GDPR regulations.

GDPR Compliance

Privacy and data protection assessment

35/100
Score

No Privacy Policy found

HIGH

GDPR requires a clear and accessible privacy policy

No Cookie Policy found

HIGH

GDPR requires clear information about cookie usage

No Cookie Consent Banner found

HIGH

GDPR requires explicit consent for non-essential cookies

Third-party services without privacy policy

HIGH

Detected services: Cloudflare

GDPR Compliance Analysis

Privacy Policy0% confidence
Cookie Policy0% confidence
Contact Information Found90% confidence
phone

🛡️NIS2 Compliance

Network & Information Security Directive compliance assessment.

NIS2 Compliance

Network & Information Security Directive

2/100
Score

No information security framework found

HIGH

NIS2 requires documented cybersecurity and information security measures

No vulnerability disclosure policy

MEDIUM

NIS2 encourages coordinated vulnerability disclosure

No security policy documentation found

HIGH

NIS2 requires documented cybersecurity governance and risk management

No incident response procedures found

HIGH

NIS2 requires documented incident response and business continuity plans

No business continuity planning found

MEDIUM

NIS2 emphasizes operational resilience and business continuity

No security contact information

HIGH

NIS2 requires clear incident reporting channels

No vulnerability reporting mechanism

MEDIUM

Clear vulnerability reporting supports coordinated disclosure

No NIS2 reference found

LOW

Consider explicitly mentioning NIS2 compliance efforts

Critical sector without clear security compliance

HIGH

Detected sectors: transport, banking, digital

📧Email Security

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC validation and email security assessment.

Email Security

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC validation

0/100
Score
Analysis failed - content could not be retrieved
SPF
Sender Policy Framework
DKIM
DomainKeys Identified Mail
DMARC
Domain-based Message Authentication
MX Records
Mail Exchange Records
BIMI
Brand Indicators
MTA-STS
Mail Transfer Agent Security
TLS-RPT
TLS Reporting
DNSSEC
DNS Security

🏆SSL/TLS Security

Certificate validity and encryption analysis.

SSL/TLS Security

Certificate validity and encryption analysis

0/100
Score
Analysis failed - content could not be retrieved

📊DNS Health

DNS configuration and security assessment.

DNS Health

DNS configuration and security assessment

0/100
Score
Analysis failed - content could not be retrieved

Network Security

Port scanning and network exposure analysis.

Network Security

Port scanning and network exposure analysis

0/100
Score
Analysis failed - content could not be retrieved

🔧Technical Analysis

Detailed technical findings and analysis from AI assessment.

Technical Analysis

Comprehensive security assessment findings

Additional Findings

The ACL Anthology website is built using the Hugo static site generator, leveraging Bootstrap 4.2.1 for responsive design, jQuery for DOM manipulation, Popper.js for UI elements, FontAwesome for icons, and SortableJS for interactive sorting features. Hosting is provided by Bluehost, a reputable provider. The site is mobile optimized with good navigation clarity and SEO meta tags. Performance is moderate, likely due to the large volume of content and static assets. There is no evidence of a traditional CMS; the static site approach enhances security and performance but requires manual content updates. Technical risks include missing DNSSEC and security headers, which should be addressed to reduce attack vectors.
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