ShamCheck vs Beacon

Received a suspicious message? ShamCheck helps you figure out if somebody is trying to scam you. Free tool to identify scam messages and phishing attempts. Don’t fall into an online fraud trap! Scammers try to hook you with an initial “sham” message. We help you to quickly weed these messages out, so you can keep yourself safe. Simply share the message or take a screenshot, and we’ll analyze it and let you know if it’s a sham. ShamCheck is powered by AppEsteem Corporation, a leading security company whose technology and research has been keeping billions of consumers safe from unwanted software and scams for the past ten years.

Not sure if that text is a scam? Paste it into Beacon and see instantly — plus exactly which words made the model suspicious. Beacon uses a machine learning model trained on real scam and spam messages to flag likely threats in seconds. Learn exactly what makes a scam message dangerous by seeing the specific highlighted words that are suspicious. Explore real scam messages reported by our users to discover and protect yourselves from real threats today. With Beacon, become a part of the community that shines light on scam protection. FEATURES • Instant detection — paste any text message and get a prediction in seconds • See the "why" — suspicious words are highlighted directly in your message, with darker highlighting showing stronger signals • Confidence score — how confident our model is that your message is a scam • Scam categories — personal, service, lottery/prize, and premium-rate scams are each identified and explained • Community forum — browse real scam messages reported by other users, filter by category, and upvote or downvote what you find • Report what you catch — help other users recognize the same scam by reporting it to the community anonymously WHY BEACON Scam texts are only getting harder to spot. Beacon was built to make scam detection transparent instead of mysterious — you should be able to see why something looks suspicious, not just be told that it is. A NOTE ON ACCURACY Beacon's predictions are not 100% accurate. It's a tool to help you think critically about a suspicious message — not a replacement for your own judgment. Always use caution with unfamiliar messages, links, and requests for personal information. Got a scam that slipped past? Report it. Every submission helps make Beacon — and the community around it — a little sharper.