Scam-busting tools to know about
Tali writes about scams and consumer rights for Which? delving into fraud, technology and consumer rights topics to keep readers safe and empowered.
Scams have evolved significantly, and it's not always easy to identify a dodgy call, text or website.
There are free tools available that can help you understand what's likely to be a con, so we asked our Which? Scam Action and Alerts Facebook community to share some of their 'go-to' tools.
While drawing on their own knowledge of spotting scams was by far the most popular scam-busting tool, here we look at some other free tools used by our community.
1. Ask Silver
Using artificial intelligence (AI) to spot patterns and analyse scams, Ask Silver enables you to check whether images, websites, text messages and phone numbers are likely to be scams.
It carries out other legwork, such as visiting webpages to check for warning signs, looking up the company behind the website, and checking for reports or reviews on the scam or the company behind it.
2. ScamAdviser
The ScamAdviser website can help to detect whether scam websites, numbers or bank accounts are legitimate.
Type in a website address, phone number or crypto address on its site, and you'll see a trust score indicating how likely it is to be a scam. ScamAdviser determines the score by drawing on various online data sources.
3. Who Called Me
Members of our Facebook scam alerts group also mentioned finding Who Called Me a useful scam-detection tool.
It's a website where people share reports on suspicious calls they’ve received; you type in a phone number to see what other people have said about it.
If it’s a scam call currently doing the rounds, you’ll get to see other people’s experiences with the scam and know not to answer or call back.
4. Bitdefender
Members of our scams group also said they use Bitdefender Scamio, a chatbot developed to help you analyse potentially fraudulent content and communications.
You can ask the chatbot to analyse an image, verify a link or decode text and email content. It will look at signs such as the sender information, patterns in the language and the structure of the message to give you a verdict.
It also looks at common scam signs taken from Bitdefender’s database of known scams and phishing attempts.
5. Image Whisperer
Image Whisperer attempts to determine whether images are AI-generated. While not all AI-generated content is scam content, scammers are increasingly using it as a tool.
Unlike some other AI detectors, Image Whisperer will tell you if it doesn’t know and give you further information to help you make up your own mind.
6. Take Five
Scams can be incredibly sophisticated, and these free tools may not easily spot the signs of a dodgy website, email, call or text. So a reliable mantra in the fight against scams is to always 'Take Five' and stop to think before you part with any money or share any sensitive details.
If you've lost money or spotted an unauthorised transaction on your account, contact your bank immediately using the phone number on the back of your card.
Scams should also be reported to Report Fraud, or by calling the police on 101 if you live in Scotland. You can also forward scam emails to report@phishing.gov.uk.
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