20 guides · plain English · no sign-up
Know what to check before you send money
Scams differ enormously in their story and barely at all in their mechanics. These guides cover the checks that work, the patterns worth recognising, and what to do when something has already happened.
- Written in plain English
- No invented statistics
- Nothing to install
Part 01
Check something
Practical checks you can run on a website, number, payment handle or wallet address before you commit to anything.
How to Check if a Website Is a Scam
Seven checks you can run on a suspicious website in minutes: the real domain, its age, contact details, payment methods, off-site reviews and community reports.
6 min readHow to Check if a Phone Number Is a Scam
What a phone number can and cannot tell you, why caller ID is unreliable, the approaches that recur most, and how to check a number against community reports.
5 min readHow to Check a Payment Request Before You Send Money
Which payment methods can be reversed and which cannot, why the method itself is the strongest signal, and the checks to run on a handle before you send anything.
5 min readHow to Check a Crypto Wallet Address Before You Send
Crypto payments cannot be reversed. How to read an address properly, what a public block explorer shows you, and the scams built around a wallet address.
5 min read
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How to Check if an Email Is a Scam
The display name is not the sender. How to read the real address, why you should never act on the link, and what a phishing email is actually trying to take.
5 min readHow to Check a Seller or Social Account Before You Buy
Account age, reused photos, and where they want the conversation and the payment to go — the checks that work on a marketplace listing or a social seller.
4 min readHow to Check a Suspicious Message or Email
Paste a suspicious message into the AI Detector to see which scam patterns it matches, what each flag means, and why a low score is not the same as an all-clear.
3 min read
Part 02
Recognise the pattern
The shapes scams share, so an approach you have never seen before still looks familiar.
Scam Warning Signs and What They Actually Mean
The eight signals that recur across almost every scam, what each one is doing to you, and why the combination matters far more than any single sign.
5 min readRomance Scam Warning Signs
How romance scams are structured, the tells that appear before any money is mentioned, and how to check someone you have only met online.
5 min read
Part 03
If it has already happened
What to do first, what is realistically recoverable, and how to avoid the second approach that follows the first.
How to Keep Watch on a Scammer Who Might Come Back
Why operations resurface under new names, which identifiers are worth recording, and how to be told when one reappears instead of checking by hand.
4 min readWhat to Send Your Bank When You Report Fraud
What your bank actually needs to open a fraud case: the exact dates, references and amounts to gather, how to describe what happened, and what to expect afterwards.
4 min readHow to Export a Report for Your Bank or the Police
How to turn a verified report into a PDF you can hand to a bank, an insurer or the police, which reports can be exported, and what the document does not prove.
2 min read
Part 04
How this platform works
What a status on this site means, how evidence is weighed, and what to do if a report names you.
Named in a Report? How to Request a Correction
What a community report does and does not claim, how to request a correction or removal on Exposing Scams, and what information makes a dispute effective.
6 min readHow Scam Verification Works on This Platform
How a submitted report becomes a status: the review stages, what each status term means, how evidence strength is judged, and the limits of all of it.
6 min readHow to Write a Scam Report That Actually Helps
What makes a report usable to somebody else: leading with identifiers, what counts as evidence, and why a second short report is worth more than one long one.
4 min readHow to Read the Evidence on a Report
Why report count is the weakest number on the page, what independence and evidence strength are measuring, and how to read a thin record honestly.
4 min read
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How to Find Your Way Around Exposing Scams
What each of the five tabs does, where the check bar, your reports, alerts and the forum live, and which screens are free rather than part of a paid plan.
3 min readHow to Report a Scam Without Using Your Real Name
What Exposing Scams asks for when you sign up, why your reports carry a display name instead of your real one, and what a moderator can and cannot see.
3 min readHow to Use the Community Forum
What the forum is for, how it differs from filing a report, and how to ask about an approach you are unsure of without naming someone you cannot yet substantiate.
2 min read
The app
Reading is the slow way to check
Everything in these guides is worth knowing. When you have a website, number, payment handle or wallet address in front of you and a decision to make, the app checks it against what the community has already reported.
Store links appear here as soon as the app is published in your region.
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