Before you pay
Is this
a scam?
Answer a few questions you can check yourself. No sign-up, nothing stored, and no invented safety score — the answer is built from what you find.
- Questions
- 12–15
- Categories
- 6
- Data stored
- None
Start here
What are you checking?
Nothing is looked up and nothing is sent anywhere. This site holds no database of safety scores — the questions are things you can check yourself, and the answer you get is built from your answers.
Stop immediately if any of these are true
Most checks add up. These do not — each one on its own is reason enough to walk away, whatever else looks reassuring.
Accepts a reversible payment method
Card networks give you chargeback rights and vet the businesses they onboard. Crypto, wires and gift cards are irreversible and unvetted, which is precisely why fraud prefers them. A seller that will not take a card has chosen to remove your recourse.
Not pushing you off the platform to pay
Marketplaces and payment platforms hold funds and arbitrate disputes. Moving the transaction off them is almost always about removing that protection, whatever reason is given.
Does NOT promise guaranteed or fixed returns
Nobody can guarantee a return in a market that moves. A vendor promising one is either committing fraud or does not understand what they are selling, and both end with your money gone. This is the single most reliable marker there is.
Publishes maximum drawdown with any return
Any strategy can show a good number over a window chosen after the fact. What tells you whether you could have held it is the worst stretch. Publishing the upside while omitting the downside is an editorial decision about what you are allowed to weigh.
Prices are not implausibly low
Nobody sells current-season goods below cost across an entire range. Deep sitewide discounting on branded items generally means counterfeit goods, no goods at all, or a store built to harvest card details.
Checkout is on a proper payment page
Legitimate stores hand card entry to a processor because handling card data themselves is expensive and heavily regulated. A homemade card form is either negligent or harvesting.
What are you dealing with?
The checks change with the situation. A fake shop and a bank impersonation call are run by different people for different amounts, and they fail on different things.
Online shop
A store, marketplace listing or brand you have not bought from before.
Investment or trading
Trading bots, signal services, funds, prop firms, brokers.
Crypto
Tokens, staking and yield products, wallets, exchanges, airdrops.
Job or work offer
Recruiters, remote roles, task work, reshipping, mystery shopping.
Someone you met online
Dating, social media or messaging contacts who bring up money.
Unexpected contact
Calls, emails or texts claiming to be your bank, a service, or support.
Completed reports
Where every check has actually been worked through for a named business, the findings are published in full — including the ones that did not pass. Reports appear only when complete, because a page of blanks reads as a page of failures.
Questions
Does this site score websites automatically?
No, and that is the point. There is no database of safety ratings behind it and nothing is looked up when you type a name. A checker that returns a confident percentage for any address you enter has not examined that address — it generated a number. People act on that number with their card in hand, and telling someone a fraudulent site is safe causes exactly the loss it appeared to prevent.
How long does it take?
A few minutes. Most questions are answered by the seller's own pages — pricing, terms, checkout — and a couple by sending one message and seeing how they reply. If a decisive question fails early, you will often have your answer within thirty seconds.
What is the single biggest warning sign?
Being asked to pay by gift card, crypto or bank transfer. Those are irreversible and unvetted, which is precisely why fraud prefers them. Close behind: anyone who contacted you first and then created urgency, and any promise of a guaranteed or fixed return.
Does a good result mean it is safe?
It means the markers associated with fraud are absent from what you checked. It cannot tell you whether a product is any good, whether a company will deliver on time, or whether an investment will make money. A completely legitimate business can still disappoint you.
I have already paid. What now?
Act quickly, because most routes have deadlines. If you paid by card, contact your card issuer about a chargeback. If you paid by bank transfer, tell your bank immediately and ask about reimbursement. Change any shared passwords and turn on two-factor authentication. Report it to your national fraud reporting service. Then expect a recovery scam to contact you, and ignore it.