A second pair of eyes.

isthisascam is a free, public reasoning aid for people who have a hunch about something they've been shown, or sent, or sold. It was built as a companion to a piece called The Golden Age of Fraud, which argues that the combined damage from investment scams, deepfake ads, mule-account farms, and pig-butchering operations is one of the largest financial-crime stories of our time — and most of it goes unreported.

Articles, videos and posts reach people who are already online and already somewhat literate about money. The rest — including the very people most likely to lose their savings — are not reading them. Large language models, on the other hand, are free and on everyone's phone. They are imperfect; but on the narrow question of does this match a known scam pattern they are very reliable. More reliable than the colleague who swears he's making 5% a month from some app.

This site is a small attempt at putting that into people's hands without friction. No login. Nothing stored. Type the thing in. Get the shape of an answer back.

What it will tell you

A verdict, a short explanation, the specific red flags it spotted in your description, questions to take back to the person who pitched you, and concrete ways to verify — SEBI lookups, RBI lists, a search you can do in five minutes. If money has already moved, it tells you what to do next.

What it is not

It is not financial advice. It cannot tell you whether an investment is good — only whether what you described matches the shape of a scam. A “no red flags” result means nothing pattern-matched, not that the thing is safe. If money has already moved and something feels wrong, do not wait for a chatbot — call 1930 and file at cybercrime.gov.in.

How it works

Static site on Cloudflare Pages. The check is a single Cloudflare Function that calls an open-source large language model on Workers AI with a carefully constructed prompt and no logging. Your input is not stored, not sold, and not used for training.

If you need help right now

Call 1930 — India's national cybercrime helpline, 24×7. File online at cybercrime.gov.in. Look up financial intermediaries at sebi.gov.in. Lenders at rbi.org.in.