Editorial Policy

Scope and standard of care

Our coverage falls into what search quality guidelines describe as Your Money or Your Life content: material that can affect a reader's financial security. We hold this content to a higher standard than general publishing. Specifically, we do not publish a procedure, deadline or liability rule unless it can be traced to a primary source and has been checked by a reviewer with relevant professional background.

Source hierarchy

We work from primary sources. When guides disagree with each other online, it is usually because they are all citing each other rather than the underlying rule. Our sourcing priority is:

1. Federal regulators and law enforcement. The Federal Trade Commission, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the federal regulations themselves — chiefly Regulation E for electronic transfers and Regulation Z for credit.
2. Payment network and industry rules. Published card network chargeback rules and ACH operating rules, where consumer-facing summaries are available.
3. Institutional documentation. Published bank and payment platform policies, cited with the recognition that these vary by institution and change without notice.
4. Peer-reviewed and technical research. For claims about how an attack works technically, such as contactless card security or voice synthesis.
5. Reported observation. Intercepted lure text and scam scripts collected by our team, always labeled as such.

We do not cite other scam-awareness blogs, content marketing produced by security vendors, or aggregated statistics whose original source cannot be located. Every guide ends with a visible sources list linking directly to the primary material.

How we handle statistics

Fraud statistics are widely misquoted online, usually by stripping the qualifier that made them meaningful. We apply three rules: figures are attributed to the publishing body and reporting period; we distinguish reported losses from estimated total losses, since the majority of fraud is never reported; and where a precise number cannot be verified, we describe the magnitude qualitatively rather than inventing precision.

Fact-checking

Guides are published under the ScamAlert editorial byline. We are deliberate about this: many consumer-finance sites invent authors and attach certifications nobody holds, which we regard as worse than an honest team byline. We claim a process, not credentials — and the process is one you can check, because every factual claim links to the source it came from.

Before a guide is published, two passes are required:

• Procedural check. Every claim about disputes, chargebacks, recalls, liability limits or filing deadlines is traced to the regulation or agency guidance it derives from, and the source is listed at the foot of the article. Anything we cannot trace is cut or explicitly labeled as uncertain.
• Technical check. Every claim about how an attack works is assessed for whether it is plausible at consumer scale. This pass exists mainly to strip out security theater — advice that sounds protective but does not measurably reduce risk. It is why our contactless card guide concludes that most readers do not need an RFID blocking wallet.

Where a named subject-matter expert has reviewed a specific guide, they are credited by name on that article. Absence of a named reviewer means exactly that: the guide was checked against primary sources by the editorial team, and no individual expert has put their name to it.

Review cycle and updates

Scam tactics change faster than most publishing schedules. Every guide displays both a published date and a last-updated date, and no guide is allowed to sit unreviewed:

• Full review at least every six months.
• Immediate review when a regulator changes a relevant rule, a payment network changes reimbursement policy, or a significant new variant is documented.
• Link verification on every review cycle, since agency URLs change and a dead reporting link is a real failure in an emergency.

When we make a substantive change — a corrected procedure, a revised deadline, a reversed conclusion — we update the last-reviewed date and note the change on the article. We do not silently rewrite guidance.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix it and say so. Report an error to editor@scamalert.blog or through our contact form, and we aim to acknowledge within two business days. Errors that could cause financial harm — an incorrect deadline, a wrong reporting channel — are corrected as a priority ahead of scheduled work.

Use of AI

We disclose this because readers deserve to know, and because we cover AI-enabled fraud. AI tools may be used internally for research assistance, copy editing and summarizing public documents. They are not used to generate published guidance unreviewed. Every claim in every guide is verified against a primary source by a named human author and approved by a named human reviewer, who are accountable for the accuracy of what appears under their names.

Editorial independence

The site is funded by display advertising served programmatically by third-party networks. Advertisers do not see content before publication, cannot request changes, and cannot commission topics. We accept no affiliate commissions, no sponsored posts and no paid links. Our full funding and conflict of interest disclosure is on the about page.

What we will not publish

• Operational fraud instructions. We explain how scams work in the detail needed to recognize and defeat them, and stop short of anything that functions as a how-to for committing fraud.
• Personalized advice. We publish general education. We do not advise individuals on specific disputes, and nothing on this site is legal, financial, investment or tax advice.
• Guaranteed recovery claims. We will not imply that losses are recoverable when they usually are not, and we never promote fund-recovery services, which are themselves a common follow-on scam.
• Fear-driven product placement. We do not manufacture urgency to sell protective products, and we say plainly when a widely marketed product does not meaningfully reduce risk.

Reader privacy in reports

Readers sometimes send us their own scam experiences. We treat those as confidential by default. We do not publish identifying details without explicit permission, and when a reader account informs a guide, it is anonymized and generalized. We never share submissions with advertisers or data brokers. See our privacy policy for how submitted information is handled.