Community Guidelines
Exposing Scams works because strangers warn each other honestly. These are the rules that keep it worth trusting — for the people reporting, and for the people being reported.
1. Report in good faith
Only submit a report about an experience you genuinely believe was fraudulent, and say what actually happened rather than what you suspect happened. Describe the sequence — how you were approached, what you were asked for, what you sent, and what you got back — because a specific account is what lets a moderator check a claim, and what lets another reader recognise the same approach when it reaches them. Knowingly false or malicious accusations harm innocent people, may be defamatory, and lead to removal of your content and suspension of your account.
2. An allegation is not a verdict
A report is one person's first-hand account, not a determination of guilt. Exposing Scams is not a law-enforcement agency, a court, or a government authority, and nothing published here decides whether anyone committed a crime. Statuses such as reported, under review, disputed and verified describe where a claim has reached in our review — they are not findings of a court. Do not present a report as proof, and do not describe somebody as a criminal on the strength of one.
3. Evidence is required, and some evidence is worth more than others
Every report must carry at least one piece of supporting evidence; one submitted without any is rejected automatically and never published. What helps most is whatever shows the transaction: the chat or message thread where the request was made, the payment receipt or transfer confirmation, the invoice, the transaction reference, the listing or profile as it appeared at the time. A screenshot should show enough around the edges to be checkable — the account name, the date, the amount. A tight crop with no context is hard to act on, and a moderator may ask for more before publishing.
4. Redact what does not need to be there
Include what proves the scam and remove what does not. Black out your own card and account numbers, security codes and home address, and anything that identifies people who are not part of the story — other members of a group chat, for instance. We may redact further during review. Evidence that exposes private data beyond what the report needs will be edited or removed.
5. No doxxing
Do not publish another person's private information — home address, workplace, government ID, banking credentials, private messages or personal photographs — beyond what is strictly necessary to describe the scam. A payment handle, a username, a website or a phone number used to run a scam is part of the report. Somebody's home address is not, and posting it is grounds for immediate removal regardless of what they are alleged to have done.
6. No harassment, threats or hate
Do not use Exposing Scams to harass, threaten, intimidate or impersonate anyone, and do not use it to organise other people to do so. That applies to somebody you believe scammed you exactly as it applies to anyone else: the purpose of a report is to warn the next person, not to punish its subject. Hateful, violent and abusive content is prohibited, and coordinated targeting is treated as a serious violation rather than a first offence.
7. Do not compromise a live investigation
If you have reported the matter to the police or a regulator and been asked not to discuss it, follow that instruction — this platform is not a substitute for their process and can complicate it. You can still file your report here once you are free to. Where a law-enforcement agency makes a lawful request to hold or remove content connected to a live investigation, we comply.
8. Forum conduct
The forum is for helping people work out what happened to them and what to do next. Answer the question that was actually asked, say plainly when you are unsure, and do not give legal or financial advice you are not qualified to give. Do not promote recovery services, private investigators, lawyers or any other paid help, including your own. Recovery-service promotion is one of the most common second scams run on people who have already lost money, so we remove it on sight and do not wait for proof that a particular offer is fraudulent.
9. No self-promotion, spam or score manipulation
Do not use reports, comments or forum posts to advertise, drive traffic, or attack a competitor. Do not run multiple accounts, coordinate with other people, or use automated tools to file reports, move a risk score or steer a discussion. Scores are derived from evidence and moderator decisions rather than from volume, and attempting to game them is a violation in its own right.
10. If you are named in a report
You have a right of reply, and you do not need an account to use it. Respond through the moderator inquiry thread on the report, use the correction request on the report's page, or write to us. Send whatever counters the claim — delivery confirmations, refund receipts, the whole message thread rather than the part that was quoted. A moderator reviews it, and a report can be edited, given added context, hidden or removed as a result. Where a published report turns out to be wrong we remove the listing rather than leave a corrected accusation standing.
11. How moderation actually works
Every report naming a person or a business is reviewed by a moderator before it appears publicly; publication is never automatic. Where it is feasible, a moderator contacts the reported party using the details in the report so they can respond before anything is published. Publishing a verified scam takes two people: a moderator decides, and an administrator publishes. Moderators may edit, hide or remove content, ask a reporter for more evidence, and change a report's status as evidence arrives from either side.
12. Reporting content, and blocking
You can report any report, comment or account you believe breaks these guidelines, and you can block an account so that you no longer see its content. Reporting content is not the same as disputing a report about you — use the correction request for that. We aim to review reports of content promptly, and we act on violations whether or not the person who posted intended harm.
13. What happens when these guidelines are broken
Depending on what happened we may remove the content, reverse a published status, restrict your ability to post, suspend your account, or ban it permanently. Serious violations — threats, doxxing, coordinated harassment, or filing a report you know to be false — can mean immediate removal without a warning. Where content appears to be unlawful we may also refer it to the relevant authority.
14. These guidelines change
We update them as new patterns appear — both new kinds of scam and new ways of misusing a platform like this one. Material changes are announced in the app. Continuing to use Exposing Scams after a change takes effect means you accept the current version.
Questions? Contact us at exposingscams.support@kunshort.com.