How this is
written and checked.

What it is

The site shows you a message exactly as it would arrive — a text thread, an email in a mail client, an incoming call, a marketplace listing, a social media DM — and asks one question: is this a scam, or is it genuine? You answer, and the warning signs light up on the message itself, each explained in plain English.

Nothing on the site is real. Every sender, number, link and dollar figure is invented for practice, so there is nothing to accidentally tap and no way to come to harm. The point is to make the mistakes here rather than in your own inbox.

Who it is for

Written first for older Australians, who are targeted heavily, and for the family members and care workers who help them. That shapes almost every decision: plain language, no jargon, no sign-up, larger type, generous touch targets, and a tone that never implies you were foolish. It also works as a five-minute team exercise for anyone who handles messages, payments or client details at work.

How the scenarios are written

Every case is modelled on scams actually circulating in Australia, drawn from public alerts rather than invented from scratch. Four decisions do most of the work:

• Five of the twenty-four messages are genuine. A drill where everything is a scam teaches people to answer “scam” to everything — and someone who distrusts every message misses their bank’s real fraud alert and their grandchild’s real text. Two cases are the same bank alert an hour apart: one fake, one real.
• The message is shown in its real surface. Not a quiz card with text, but a phone with a sender line, an email client with the address after the @, a call screen with the caller ID. The evidence people need to read in real life is the chrome, not the words — so the chrome is there.
• Explanations are anchored to the evidence. The giveaway phrases highlight, and the explanation attaches to that exact phrase, so you read the reason while looking at the thing it describes.
• Nothing is scored punitively. The lowest band explains that missing these is normal, and names the habit that works regardless of score.

Where the facts come from

Scenarios are written from public alerts and guidance published by Scamwatch and the National Anti-Scam Centre, the ACCC, the ATO, Services Australia, Australia Post and Moneysmart. Each case page cites the source its pattern came from, so the reasoning can be checked rather than taken on trust.

Two rules govern any number or ranking that appears on the site:

• Figures carry a year and a source. Scam statistics move every year. A figure without a date is not evidence, so the year and the publication it came from appear beside it.
• No unsourced superlatives. Claims of the form “the most reported” or “the costliest” are only used where a named dataset supports them for a stated year, and are removed when it no longer does.

Corrections and updates

Scam tactics are rewritten constantly and official figures are republished each year, so pages here go stale in a way that ordinary web writing does not. Every substantive guidance page carries the date it was last reviewed, so staleness is visible rather than hidden.

• Factual errors are corrected, not quietly deleted. When a claim turns out to be wrong it is fixed at the source and the review date is updated.
• Statistics are re-checked when the underlying report is republished. The National Anti-Scam Centre publishes quarterly, and its annual report lands in the first half of each year.
• Stale advice is rewritten rather than left standing. Guidance that was true when written can stop being true — the rules governing what a text message can show you are an example — and is revised when it does.

What this site will not do

• It never judges a real message. This is a practice ground, not a checker. Telling somebody a genuine scam “looks fine” would be worse than offering nothing, so no verdict is ever given on a real message. Every page points instead at the one reliable check: contact the organisation yourself, on a number you found.
• No accounts, no sign-up, no tracking, no analytics. Nothing is collected, nothing you type leaves your device, and there is no backend at all.
• It claims no affiliation. Real organisations are named inside the simulated messages because that is what scammers do. The site is not connected to any of them.

What it cannot do

It teaches recognition and a habit; it cannot make anyone immune. Scam wording is rewritten every month, and the most convincing scams are the ones that give a careful reader nothing to find. That is exactly why the advice this site keeps returning to is not “spot them” but three habits that work regardless of how good the forgery is.

Ring the number on your card. Type the address in yourself. Tell one person before you pay.

Report real scams at scamwatch.gov.au ↗.