Our expertise
GotAScam is built and maintained by a security team led by a practitioner with more than 25 years of hands-on experience in cybersecurity and fraud detection. Our work sits at the intersection of threat intelligence, phishing analysis, and consumer protection — the same disciplines used to defend banks and enterprises, turned toward helping everyday people.
How we analyze scams
Every message submitted to GotAScam is checked across multiple independent signals rather than a single guess:
- Link & domain analysis — domain age, look-alike spoofing, redirect chains, and known-malicious blocklists (URLhaus, Spamhaus).
- Live threat intelligence — cross-referencing verified active phishing campaigns and alerts from sources including the FTC, FBI, and OpenPhish.
- AI language analysis — detecting the impersonation, urgency, fear, and credential-harvesting patterns that scams rely on.
- Reputation checks — weighing high-trust domains against a million-domain reputation dataset to cut false alarms.
You can read the full breakdown on our how it works page.
Why you can trust our guides
The scam explainers in our scam guide are written and reviewed by our security team, grounded in the scams we see reported in real time. We update them as tactics evolve. We don’t take money to feature or downplay any scam, and our free checker gives the same honest verdict whether or not you ever become a customer.
Independent and privacy-minded
GotAScam is an independent service, not affiliated with any government agency, bank, or brand mentioned in our guides. We built the tool because clear, trustworthy scam-checking shouldn’t require being a security expert yourself. See our privacy policy for how we handle what you submit.
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