Real scam messages,
decoded.
Most videos take one scam message — quoted from an agency's published example, or rebuilt from documented tactics and labeled as a reconstruction — and show you the exact giveaway. Others answer what to do when it has already happened, or test a familiar scam-safety belief — whether a browser padlock proves a site is genuine, for instance — against the evidence. Every one ends with a single rule you can carry.
Unknown number
(State Toll Service): We've noticed an outstanding toll amount of $12.51 on your record. To avoid a late fee of $50.00, visit myturnpiketollservices.com to settle your balance.
6:12 AM
You cannot tell from the suffix alone. Real toll agencies use .com addresses too — Florida's official SunPass runs on sunpass.com. So the question is never whether the link looks right. Leave the message, find your toll agency yourself, and check whether you owe anything.
Verbatim example published by FBI IC3, PSA240412, 12 April 2024One, decoded
43 seconds. The message, the giveaway, and one rule you can keep. Every video meets the same evidence standard, and carries its source on screen while the claim is being made.
Three things, in order
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Recognize it
The tell is usually somewhere specific, and we point at it. We show the real message, isolate the giveaway, and name it plainly.
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Avoid being targeted
Why certain messages reach certain people, and the handful of habits that make you a harder target.
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Recover
If money has already gone, some recovery options are time-sensitive. Plain, numbered steps: who to call, in what order, and what deadlines apply.
Why you can check our work
Every claim carries its source on screen while it is being made: the agency, the document number, the date. When we show a real or agency-published scam message we reproduce it exactly, mistakes included. When we rebuild an example from documented tactics, the screen labels it a reconstruction and keeps saying so. You can check any of it without taking our word for it.
- Sources named on screen, not just in the description
- Scam messages quoted verbatim. We never tidy up a scammer's mistakes, because the mistakes are the evidence
- No real person is ever invented, and no figure is ever presented as a fact about a real victim. Where we rebuild a scam message from documented tactics, it is labeled a reconstruction on screen, and any amount in it is illustrative
- No unsourced statistic. Every factual claim names its source
- A public corrections log, where substantive errors stay visible
- Our use of AI disclosed in full
Send us a scam
If something landed in your inbox or on your phone and you think other people should see it, we would like to look at it. Start by telling us what happened, without attaching anything: how to send us a scam safely. We redact identifying details before anything is shown, we publish submissions anonymously unless you explicitly ask to be credited, and permission is a separate step you take afterwards, not something sending us a message signs away.
Sending something does not mean we will use it. We look for patterns that will affect a lot of people, not one-off cases, and that is not a judgment on what happened to you.