About Scam or Safe
The third time, I actually laughed, not because it was funny, but because I couldn't believe it had happened to me again.
My name is Daniel Hernandez, and I built Scam or Safe because in the space of about a year, I got scammed three times. I don't think of myself as an easy target. I check my statements. I've told my own parents a hundred times to hang up on "the bank" and call the number on their card. And it still got me, three times, three completely different ways.
The first one was small. A text about a parcel that couldn't be delivered until I paid a redelivery fee, barely more than a dollar. I was between things, I was expecting a package, and I tapped the link and typed my card number in without really looking at the address bar. The fee was never the point. A day later my bank flagged a payment I hadn't made. That little text had just been fishing for the card.
The second one cost me more than money. I was selling an old camera lens online. A buyer paid straight away, and I got an email saying the funds were being "held" until I shipped the item and replied with a tracking number. It looked exactly like the real thing. So I posted the lens. There was no payment, there never had been, and there was no way to get it back. I felt sick about that one for a week.
The third is the one that still makes my stomach drop. My phone rang with a number that matched my bank's, and a calm, professional voice who already knew the last four digits of my card told me there was a suspicious payment and that, to protect my money, I needed to move it to a "safe account." I was partway through setting up that transfer when something made me stop, hang up, and call the real number on the back of my card. It wasn't me being clever. I just got lucky. It was that close.
Why I actually built this
Here's the part nobody warns you about: most of being scammed is shame. You don't want to say it out loud. You lie awake replaying it, thinking, how did I not see that? For a while I didn't tell anyone. Then I mentioned it to my family almost as a joke, and it turned out an aunt of mine had lost far more than I had to something similar, and had never told a single person either.
That's when it stopped feeling embarrassing and started making me angry. One night I actually sat down and read: the FTC's fraud reports, the FBI's numbers, the UK's Action Fraud, forum threads full of people describing the exact scripts that had been used on me. And the thing that hit me hardest was that none of it was random, and none of it was really about being stupid. These things are designed. Tested. Written to reach you in the three seconds before your brain catches up, when you're busy, or scared, or hopeful.
What I kept wishing was that there had been one calm, plain place I could have checked before I tapped, before I shipped, before I moved the money. Not a lecture. Not scare tactics. Just: here's what this kind of message looks like, here's the tell, here's what to do next. That place didn't really exist in a way that made sense to me, so I started building it, one guide at a time, at night and on weekends, in the same plain words I'd use explaining it to my mom on the phone.
What I promise you
I'm not a cybersecurity expert, and I've never pretended to be one. I'm the guy who got burned and then did the homework. I started Scam or Safe on my own, one guide at a time, and today a small editorial team helps me research, write, and review the guides, so we can cover far more ground, far more carefully, than I ever could alone. We keep the language careful on purpose: we'll tell you when a message has the hallmarks of a scam, but we'll never tell you something is "definitely safe," because no honest person can promise that. And I built the free scam checker and the spot-the-scam quiz so you can practise recognising these patterns before one lands in your inbox for real.
If Scam or Safe gives one person the two-second pause I didn't have the first three times, then every late night was worth it. Thanks for being here. And if a message ever feels off to you, trust that feeling. In my experience it's almost always right.
Daniel Hernandez
What Scam or Safe does
- A growing, plain-language library of more than 600 scam guides across 21 categories, each with the red flags and safe next steps.
- A free, private scam checker that flags common scam patterns in a message, running entirely in your browser.
- In-depth breakdowns of the highest-impact scams, with statistics cited from fraud-prevention authorities.
- A weekly scam of the week and the right official reporting contacts for your country.
What it does not do
I can't verify individual messages, companies, or people, and I can't tell you whether one specific message is genuine. I never claim something is "definitely a scam" or "guaranteed safe," and I'm not affiliated with any bank, retailer, government agency, or police force. This is educational guidance meant to be combined with checks through official channels. You can read more about my process on the how we review scams page.
How the site is funded
To keep it free, the site may show advertising. Ads never influence the guidance, are kept clearly separate from the content, and are never placed inside the scam-checker results. More detail is in the privacy policy. If you spot something inaccurate, please tell me, I read every message and I fix things.