Who checks your messages, and why

Is it a scam? is built and run by one person: Daniel Treacy, a software engineer on the Sunshine Coast. It exists because the people scams are aimed at — parents, grandparents, sole traders doing their own books — are the people least able to tell, and the ones least likely to ask. Every guide on this site is written by him, and every verdict the service gives comes from a rules engine whose reasoning is published in full.

The person

Daniel's career has been in software: engineering first, then coaching and running delivery teams inside large organisations, including a stint on a delivery team at the Australian Taxation Office during JobKeeper. That's where the shape of this product comes from. Government systems are built to be correct and defensible. Scams are built to be fast and plausible. The gap between the two is where people lose money, and closing it means being right in about ten seconds, in plain English, on the phone someone already has.

He builds Forward It independently under the Treako studio, self-funded, from Queensland. No investors, no advertising, no data sales. The business is Treacy Enterprises (ABN 94 511 247 817).

How a verdict is made

A forwarded message is read by a rules engine first — around ninety named detectors covering lookalike domains, sender authentication, payment redirection, gift-card and crypto scripts, the “safe account” move, remote-access asks, and the specific shapes of Australia Post, myGov, ATO, toll and bank impersonation. The engine's reasons are printed in every reply. A language model reviews the result, and can raise caution but is never allowed to invent a red on wording alone: on email, a SCAM verdict has to rest on a structural fact about the sender, the link, or the money. The full explanation, including what we get wrong and how we fix it, is at How verdicts are made.

Every rule is tested against real messages Australians have forwarded — both the scams that must always be caught and the genuine emails from Qantas, Linkt, NAB, Myer and the rest that must never be called a scam. When a verdict is wrong, the fix ships with a test so it stays fixed.

Why the guides exist

Most of the traffic to this site never signs up. That's fine. A grandmother who finds the Australia Post guide at 9pm and doesn't tap the link has been protected as surely as a subscriber. The guides are written from what people actually forward, which is why they read the way they do: the rule first, the sample message, the tells in order of weight, then what to do. If a guide is out of date, say so and it will be corrected, with the change noted on the page.

Sources we rely on

• The ACCC's National Anti-Scam Centre and its Scamwatch alerts and the annual Targeting Scams report
• ASIC's investor alert list and Moneysmart
• The Australian Communications and Media Authority (SMS sender ID rules, porting rules)
• IDCARE, Australia's national identity support service
• Live threat feeds for malicious domains, and the messages our own users forward, which are the ground truth for everything above

Reach a person

Every email is answered, by Daniel. hello@getforwardit.com. For media and partnership enquiries, the same address. He's also on LinkedIn.