About Scam Scanner

Scam Scanner is built and maintained by Reuben Schultz, the founder of RS Digital (an Australian sole trader, ABN 99 557 604 248). He built the app's brand-impersonation database and Australian scam-pattern detection, and writes and reviews the guides and scam-type explainers on this site. You can read exactly how the detection works on the methodology page, or get in touch at support@tryscamscanner.com.

Scam Scanner takes a piece of suspicious content and returns a structured risk assessment: a trust score from 0 to 100, a clear verdict, the specific red flags it found with the reasoning behind them, and practical next steps. It works as a free web checker at /check for quick text and link checks, and as a free iPhone app with deeper, multi-input scanning.

The iPhone app accepts six kinds of input, so almost anything suspicious can be checked:

• Text messages and written messages you paste in
• Links and URLs
• Emails
• Screenshots
• QR codes
• Photos, plus a name or phone number

When a scan starts from the camera, Scam Scanner runs an on-device Vision scene classifier to understand what the image actually is — for example a text-message screenshot, an email, a QR code or a physical document — before it analyses the content. That context helps the analysis focus on the right scam signals for the kind of thing being checked.

Scam Scanner carries an impersonation database of around 93 brands relevant to Australian users — Australia Post, the ATO, myGov, the big four banks, toll operators, telcos, couriers, retailers and major charities among them. Each entry records the brand's official domains and sender IDs and the scam patterns that impersonate it, so the analysis can flag lookalike senders and domains that a genuine message would never use.

Rather than a blunt yes/no, Scam Scanner gives a 0–100 trust score and sorts it into four clear verdicts: Safe (80–100), Caution (55–79), Suspicious (25–54) and Scam (0–24). The score, with the specific red flags behind it, lets you judge how much caution a message warrants instead of relying on a single label. On the iPhone app the result screen also adapts how it presents a verdict based on how confident the analysis is — but the underlying scale is always these four verdicts.

The deeper analysis is powered by an AI model reached through a secure proxy. The scam-detection logic — what to look for and how to weigh it — lives in the app; the proxy is a passthrough that forwards the request and returns the result. No API keys are stored on the device.

Scam Scanner is built for Australia. Its scam patterns, brand database, phone-number formats and reporting guidance are all Australian-specific — it points people to Scamwatch, ACMA, the ACCC and IDCARE, and understands the local services scammers most often impersonate.

The web checker is free with no signup, and the iPhone app includes three free lifetime scans. For unlimited scanning plus the full set of input methods and deeper analysis, there is an optional Pro upgrade. You can get the app on the App Store.