The short version
A scam check is a test of the signals that separate paid work from fraud: whether a platform charges you to start, whether it publishes how and when it pays, whether a real company operates it, and how it found you. Answer the eleven questions below and you get one of five verdicts — from strong legitimacy signals down to stop, walk away. Three of the questions are disqualifiers: paying to work, earning by recruiting, and moving money for someone else end the check on their own, because no other answer makes those safe.
What the score means
| Score | Verdict | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 85–100 | Strong legitimacy signals | Good signals — verify payout details yourself before committing time. |
| 70–84 | Likely legitimate | Check independent reviews on Reddit or Trustpilot before sharing data. |
| 40–69 | Mixed — verify first | Signals are split — resolve the three pillars (payout, operator, reviews) independently. |
| 14–39 | Red flags | Several scam patterns match — walk away. Do not pay or share identity documents. |
| 0–13 | Stop — walk away | Do not pay anything, do not share data, do not install software. A disqualifier applies. |
Run the check
Hard stops — walk away immediately
These four are not warnings to weigh up. Each one is a complete answer on its own.
- Any request to pay to work — registration, training, or "task unlock" fees, including a "refundable" deposit. Legitimate work pays you; it does not charge you for access.
- Income that depends on recruiting — downlines, levels, commission on people you sign up. That is a pyramid structure, whatever the page calls it.
- Requests to receive or forward money, or to "test" a payment system. This is money-mule recruitment, and the bank account involved carries your name.
- Identity documents before any work — a government ID, tax number, or bank login at signup. Tax details belong at payout, when there is something to report.
The six patterns behind almost every task scam
Run any unfamiliar platform against these before you sign up. Each one maps to a signal in the check above.
Pay-to-work
A fee to register, to "unlock" the task queue, or for mandatory training. Sometimes dressed as a refundable deposit that returns after your first payout — which does not arrive. Legitimate platforms are free to join; they make money from the work, not from you.
Signal 1 · minimum payout
The phantom payout store
Earnings accrue as points and convert only into an internal "rewards mall" — credit you can never withdraw as money. The work feels real and the balance climbs, which is the point: the balance is the product, not a debt they owe you.
Signals 1 & 6 · points system
The recruitment pyramid
Pay depends on how many people you bring in, through levels, teams, or commission on signups. Task work exists as cover. The only participants who profit are the ones who joined earliest, which is a mathematical property of the structure rather than a criticism of the people in it.
Signal 5 · referral program
Money-mule recruitment
You are asked to receive payments, forward funds, or "test" a transfer system while keeping a percentage. The money is proceeds of fraud being moved through your account. This is the one pattern on this list with criminal exposure attached to it, and the "job" is the laundering mechanism.
Disqualifier 3 · identity verification
Guaranteed income claims
"$500 a day, no skills needed." Real platforms describe a rate — per task, per audio minute, per test — because earnings depend on available work and your speed. A headline daily figure is a marketing promise no honest platform can make, since it depends on volume they do not control.
Signal 2 · effective hourly rate
Identity harvesting up front
A government ID, Social Security number, or bank login demanded at signup, before there is any money to pay you. Collected data has value whether or not the work ever materialises, which is what makes the demand itself the business model.
Signal 8 · identity verification
What our own verification shows
Counts read straight from the directory at build time, so they move as it grows. Everything below is measured against the 3028 cited sources behind the listings — nobody else publishes these, because producing them means doing the verification.
Recomputed on every build, so adding platforms updates these figures automatically. How we verify · Browse all platforms
If you have already paid or shared your ID
Recovery windows are short — hours matter more than which order you do these in. Start with whichever line below applies to you.
If you paid by card
Call the number on the back of your card and ask for a chargeback, saying the service was not delivered. Do it within your card network's window — commonly 120 days, but issuer policies vary. In the US you can also file at reportfraud.ftc.gov; in the UK, with Action Fraud; in Australia, with Scamwatch.
If you sent a bank transfer
Contact your bank immediately and ask them to recall the payment — same-day is far more recoverable than same-week. Transfers you authorised yourself are usually harder to reverse than card payments, which is why the request to "test the payment system" works as well as it does.
If you shared an ID or tax number
Assume it is now in someone else's hands and act on that: place a credit freeze or fraud alert with the credit bureaus, and check your statements for accounts you did not open. In the US, identitytheft.gov walks through the recovery plan step by step.
If you reused a password
Change it everywhere it was used, starting with email — an email account is the reset path for everything else. Turn on two-factor authentication while you are there. If the same password protected your bank, change that first.
If they are still contacting you
Stop replying, including to say you know it is a scam — engagement confirms the number is live and gets it resold. Block the sender, and report the account to the platform they contacted you on. Recovery-fee offers are themselves a second scam aimed at people who already lost money.
Be sceptical of anyone offering to recover your money for an upfront fee. Recovery fraud targets people who have already lost money, using the lists that scam produced.
Scam-check questions
How does this scam check work?
It runs 11 questions in two stages: three disqualifiers that end the check on their own, then eight scored signals drawn from the same facts we verify on every one of the 420 platforms in this directory. The three disqualifiers catch pay-to-work fees, recruitment-based earnings, and money forwarding. If none of those fire, the eight signals score to a 0–100 verdict. It all runs in your browser.
Can this tell me whether a specific website is a scam?
It cannot, and no tool honestly can. There is no reliable lookup that answers that question for an arbitrary domain, so this page does not pretend to offer one. What it does instead is test the signals you can actually observe, which is how you judge a site nobody has assessed yet.
Are instant "scam checker" scores reliable?
No. A verdict on a site that was never examined is invented, and an invented score is dangerous in both directions — it brands legitimate businesses as scams, and it reassures people about sites that are not. Tools that score any domain on demand work from domain age, hosting country, and a purchased blocklist that covers a rounding error of the web. The signals above are what actually predict whether a platform pays.
What if the platform I am checking is not in your directory?
That tells you nothing about its safety, in either direction. We track 420 platforms, each verified against 3028 cited sources, and that is a deliberate fraction of what exists. A platform missing from the directory means we have not verified it yet. Run the check above — the questions work on a site nobody has ever assessed.
Does a good score mean the platform is safe?
No — it means the observable signals look like a real platform, which is a different claim. A clean score cannot tell you that a platform will still exist in six months, or that its task volume is enough to be worth your time. Always confirm the payout minimum and the payment method on the platform itself before committing hours to it.
Is my data sent anywhere when I use this?
No. There is no network request after you submit — no fetch, no form post, no analytics event carrying your answers. The scoring table is written into the page when the site is built, and the arithmetic happens in your browser. You can confirm it in your browser's network tab, which stays silent.
What if one of the disqualifiers applies but everything else looks legitimate?
Then it is still a no. The three disqualifiers are not weighted signals that a good score can offset — a platform that charges you to work is not partially safe because it publishes a privacy policy. That is exactly the confusion the old scoring model created, and the reason these three now override everything else.
I have already paid or shared my ID. What now?
Act today rather than this week, because recovery windows are short. If it was a card payment, request a chargeback through your issuer. If it was a transfer, call your bank and ask them to recall it. If you shared a government ID or tax number, freeze your credit. Our full recovery steps are below — and be sceptical of anyone who offers to get your money back for a fee.