Our checks follow the categories published by the ACCC's National Anti-Scam Centre, with the Australian details that matter — real sender IDs, real institution web addresses, local payment rails like PayID and BPAY.
Every check also looks past the words: how old the web address is, whether it's been reported as malicious, whether the email really came from who it claims. New patterns are added as they appear — that's our job, not theirs.
Every line above has a working detector behind it. The list is not marketing: a test suite runs a representative message for each claim on this page through the engine and fails the build if the claim is not detected. A category cannot be added here without the code that catches it. How a verdict is made →
Solar, roof repairs, a driveway, an energy switch, a funeral plan. A folder on the kitchen table, a pen already out, and a price that's only good today. The invoice that follows it, too. Photograph the pages, or forward the PDF, and send it in one email or WhatsApp.
We'll tell you what it commits you to. We won't tell you whether it's a good price — that depends on your roof, and we've never seen your roof. Get a second quote. Nobody legitimate needs an answer today.
And the job that gets paid in stages — deposit, frame, lock-up — is remembered. If the same company comes back with different bank details, we say so before the next payment goes out, even when the email reads perfectly. That's how builders' inboxes get emptied: not at the quote, at the third invoice.
A free trial for the grandkids' movies, a news site, an antivirus renewal. Nothing felt wrong — that's the point. The terms arrive afterwards, in a confirmation email, in small grey type. Forward it to us and we'll read the part nobody does.
You're all set! Enjoy your free trial.
Thanks for signing up. Your 30-day free trial has started — there's nothing to pay today.
After your trial, your membership continues at $49.99 per month, billed automatically from 22 August. To cancel, please call our member care team.
Most of these are real companies doing nothing wrong. The answer isn't danger — it's commitment: the amount, the date, and the way out, quoted from the line we read it in. The purchase was your call. The small grey text shouldn't be a surprise.
Scams don't arrive one at a time. They arrive as campaigns — the same fake toll text blasted at thousands of households in a day, with only the link and the amount changed. Most protection sees one message. Ours sees the pattern.
Each of those is reduced to a fingerprint — the shape of the scam, scrambled, with the changing details stripped out. It holds no message, no number and no name, and it can't be read back. And we'll be straight with you: this gets stronger as more households join, which is why we set up whole communities at once — a retirement village, a walking group, a carers network — rather than one family at a time.
They forward in the Messages app already on their phone. No app store, no password, nothing new to learn.
A quoted phone number can't buy a “looks fine,” and nobody can pressure the system into one. A false all-clear is the thing we exist to prevent.
Never an inbox, never a phone. The family sees events — “a scam was caught” — never the message. And the most personal scams stay between us and the person entirely, unless they choose to share: shame is how those scams win, and we don't hand it a weapon.
A scam warning is always answered in full — grace periods, ended plans and unknown numbers included.
Already been caught by one? Here's who to ring, in order — free, whether you're a customer or not. We don't recover money and we never take a fee to try.