---
title: "About Scam Lantern | Scam Lantern"
description: "What Scam Lantern is: free scam checkers and reporting guides that run in your browser, built on official sources. General information, not legal advice."
url: https://scamlantern.me/about/
---

About

# About Scam Lantern

A small set of free tools for the moment a suspicious text, email, call or message arrives: check it, see where its links really go, and know where to report it.

## What it does

The message checker looks for the warning signs that consumer and cyber security agencies describe: pressure, unusual payment methods, requests for codes or passwords, links that don’t go where they claim, lookalike web addresses, and openers like “Hi Mum, new number”. The toll and delivery pages compare a link with the official web addresses we confirmed on each organisation’s own website. The gift card, bank call and report pages turn official guidance into steps you can follow, in order.

## How it works

Everything runs in your browser. What you paste or type is not sent to a server. Links are worked out with a copy of the Public Suffix List that is part of the site, so even the link check makes no network request. Your report notes are kept in your browser’s local storage on your device, and nowhere else.

## Where the information comes from

Every rule and every step names its source: the FTC, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, CISA, the CFPB, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, Report Fraud, Citizens Advice, Stop Scams UK and the Payment Systems Regulator, Canada’s Anti-Fraud Centre, Scamwatch, An Garda Síochána, the CCPC, ComReg, and the toll agencies’ and delivery companies’ own fraud pages. We checked them all on 5 November 2026 and give each page’s own date where it has one. Where we couldn’t confirm something on an official page, we left it out.

## What it can’t do

No tool can prove that a message is or isn’t a scam. A message with no warning signs can still be one. When in doubt, contact the organisation using a number or website you find yourself. Scam Lantern gives general information, not legal or financial advice, and it doesn’t receive or pass on reports.

There are no ads and no trackers. The site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to count page views, without cookies and without ever seeing what you type or paste. See the [privacy page](https://scamlantern.me/privacy/) for the details.