How This Tool Works

This scam detector analyzes emails for common red flags used by scammers. It runs entirely in your browser — nothing is sent to any server, and your email text is never stored or transmitted.

The Analysis Process

1. Pattern Recognition

We look for specific patterns that scammers commonly use. These include:

• Urgency language — Words and phrases designed to create time pressure
• Suspicious URLs — Link shorteners, lookalike domains, unusual TLDs
• Request patterns — Gift cards, wire transfers, password requests
• Spoofed senders — Email addresses designed to mimic legitimate companies
• Threats and intimidation — Legal action, arrest, account suspension
• Too-good-to-be-true offers — Lottery wins, inheritance, guaranteed returns
• Grammar anomalies — Unusual phrasing that suggests translation or scams

2. Weighted Scoring

Not all red flags are equally concerning. We assign different weights to different types of patterns:

• High weight (5) — Suspicious requests (gift cards, wire transfers), threats
• Medium-high weight (4) — Suspicious links, sender spoofing
• Medium weight (3) — Urgency pressure, too-good-to-be-true claims
• Low weight (2) — Grammar issues (sometimes legitimate emails have errors too)

The total score, combined with the number and type of flags found, determines the risk level.

3. Risk Assessment

Based on the analysis, we assign one of four risk levels:

• HIGH — Multiple strong indicators of a scam. Exercise extreme caution.
• MEDIUM — Some concerning signs. Verify through official channels.
• LOW — Few or minor flags detected. Still be vigilant.
• UNABLE TO DETERMINE — Not enough text to analyze properly.

Important: A "LOW" risk assessment does NOT mean an email is safe. It means we didn't detect strong warning signs. Scammers are constantly evolving, and new techniques may not be caught by this tool.

What We Do NOT Do

• We do not verify sender identity
• We do not check if links lead to malicious websites
• We do not guarantee safety
• We do not store or transmit your data
• We do not provide legal or financial advice

Best Practices

This tool is one part of scam protection. Here's what we recommend:

1. Trust your instincts — If something feels wrong, it probably is
2. Verify through official channels — Contact organizations using phone numbers or websites you find independently
3. Check the sender carefully — Scammers use lookalike addresses
4. Hover over links — See where they actually lead before clicking
5. Never give remote access — Legitimate companies don't ask for this
6. Never pay with gift cards — No legitimate business operates this way
7. Take your time — Urgency is a manipulation tactic

Limitations

This tool has important limitations:

• It cannot detect all scams — scammers are always evolving
• It may produce false positives — some legitimate emails have these patterns
• It cannot analyze images or attachments
• It works best with English text
• Very short emails (under 50 characters) are hard to analyze reliably

Privacy

Your email text never leaves your browser. All analysis is performed locally using JavaScript. Nothing is sent to any server, nothing is logged, and nothing is stored.

This site is static HTML hosted on Cloudflare Pages. There is no backend, no database, and no analytics beyond basic page views.

Open Source

Want to see exactly how this works? The detection patterns are in js/patterns.js and the analysis logic is in js/scanner.js. You can inspect them in your browser's developer tools.