A text says your account is suspended. An alert wants you to call a number right now. A charge you don't recognise is sitting on your statement. Photograph it, or paste its words here first. This checker compares the wording against the scam scripts the FTC publishes — the fake fraud department, the callback number, the gift-card demand — and tells you which script each phrase resembles and what to do. The photo is read on your own device; it never leaves it. And no result here will ever tell you a message is fine — that promise is the one thing a checker like this must never make.
Pattern list version 1.0 · last updated October 25, 2026 · built from the FTC's published consumer guidance. Scripts change; the date matters.
Photograph the message — or paste its words
Private by design — the reading and the checking happen in your browser. Your photo is never uploaded.
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Honest scope
What this checker can see — and what it cannot
The scale of the problem is measured, not guessed: consumers reported losing $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024 (FTC, March 2025) — up 25% in a year — and imposter scams were the most-reported category. The scripts those losses came from are not secret; the FTC publishes them so people can recognise them. That published list is what this tool checks against.
It can flag, from the words alone
It cannot do — no tool can
Wording that matches seven published script families, quoted back to you phrase by phrase
Tell you a message or a charge is fine. No result here means that, ever — the third band says "no pattern found", and prints why that is not proof of anything
The demand underneath the story: move money, gift cards, crypto, a wire, a check sent back
Judge a bare statement line — a merchant, an amount and a date carry no script language, so there is nothing to match. Different question, different tools (linked under every result)
A photo read on your own device, with nothing uploaded
Ask your bank whether an alert came from them, see where a link really leads, or read anything the page shows as a picture rather than words
Scripts as published up to the update date on the tool
Know a script invented after that date. Scammers rewrite constantly; the list is dated because honesty requires it
The seven scripts it checks against
Script
What it sounds like in words
Impersonation
"This is your bank's fraud department… the IRS… your account has been suspended"
The callback trap
"Call us immediately at this number" — the agent on the phone is the second half of the script
Pressure
"Within 24 hours or your account will be closed… legal action will be taken"
The specific payment demand
Gift cards, a Bitcoin ATM, a wire, "move your money to protect it"
The overpayment
"We sent you too much — deposit the check and send the difference back"
The delivery fee
"Your package could not be delivered — pay a small redelivery fee at this link"
Easy money
"Earn $800 a day from home… pay a fee to unlock your earnings"
Yes, a bigger tool exists — here is the honest difference
Norton Genie is free and checks screenshots and pasted text of messages, emails and websites, and it is good at that general job. Two things are different here. Your photo is read on your own device and never uploaded to a server. And this checker is built for the money end of the problem — a bank charge or a card alert — so instead of ending at a verdict, every result ends in the recovery route, the dispute deadline and the letter that opens the dispute.
No — and the result says so itself, in those words: no match is not proof of anything. This checker only knows the scripts the FTC has already published. A script written last week, wording the photo reader misread, or a trap with no wording at all is invisible to it. If the message asks you for money, codes or account details, settle it through a route the message did not give you — your bank's own app, or the number on the back of your card.
No. Banks send real alerts, and honest alerts often carry urgent wording — that is why single weak phrases never raise a flag here, and why flags describe wording, not senders. What separates a real alert from the script is the ask: a bank will never ask you to move money, buy gift cards or crypto, pay by wire, deposit a check and send some back, or read out a code. If an alert asks for any of those, it does not matter whose name is on it.
No. The photo is read by software running inside your browser, on your own device, and the text it produces stays in the page in front of you. Screenshots of bank messages can carry names, amounts and pieces of account numbers, so the tool was built so that none of it is uploaded, stored or sent to any server. Close the tab and it is gone.
A pattern check cannot answer that, and the result will tell you so. A statement line — a merchant name, an amount, a date — carries almost none of the language the scripts use, so there is nothing for the patterns to bite on either way. If you do not recognise the charge, the productive questions are who the merchant is and how long you have to dispute it. The result links both routes: the deadline calculator and the case checker.
Sources (checked October 25, 2026): FTC, "How To Avoid a Scam" (consumer.ftc.gov — the four signs: pretending to be an organisation you know; a problem or a prize; pressure to act immediately; insisting you pay in a specific way — and the rule never to deposit a check and send money back); FTC impersonation-scam spotlight (2024 data — fake delivery problems, fake security alerts, "move your money to protect it"); FTC task-scam spotlight (December 2024 — never pay anyone to get paid); FTC fraud data release (March 2025 — $12.5 billion reported lost in 2024, up 25%; imposter scams the most-reported category; investment scams $5.7 billion); Gen Digital newsroom (July 25, 2023 — Norton Genie launch).
General information only — not legal advice. This checker matches wording against published scam scripts; it cannot determine that any message or charge is fraudulent, and a no-match result does not establish that one is honest. Settle questions about your money with your bank, through a route the message did not provide.
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