Frequently asked questions

GACS (Global Anti-Crime & Safety) is a free public-safety platform for detecting scams before money moves. Paste a social-media profile URL, website domain, phone number, or crypto wallet address and you get a Safe / Caution / Danger verdict in under 5 seconds, backed by our public registry of confirmed scam reports. Alongside the scanners we publish free step-by-step guides for every major scam type, a public database of confirmed scammer identifiers, and free safety courses with certificates. The goal is simple: a 30-second check anyone can run before they send money, click a link, or trust a stranger online.

Yes. The core tools — social impersonator checks, website and domain checks, wallet and phone lookups, the public scam database, the guides, and the free courses — are free and ad-free for individuals. We never paywall safety information. Optional paid tiers exist for creators and families who want continuous monitoring, saved alerts, and follower-protection workflows, and we accept voluntary donations. That is the entire business model: no ads, no data resale, no payments from anyone we might report on.

GACS was built by an independent developer who watched a family member lose $40,000 to a fake crypto influencer on X. The site exists to make 30-second impersonator detection available to anyone before they send money, click a link, or DM a fake support account.

No. GACS is an independent public-safety project. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or paid by any platform, exchange, or government.

Fair question — any site asking you to paste links deserves skepticism. The honest test is behavior: GACS never messages you first, never asks for your seed phrase, private keys, passwords, or wallet connection, and never charges a fee to check anything or to remove a listing. We tell you who runs it (an independent developer, publicly named on our About page), we cite our sources on every registry page, and every listing has a public appeal form so the people we list can fight back. The scam pattern looks the opposite: unsolicited DMs, urgency, and a request for payment or credentials. If anyone contacts you claiming to be from GACS and asking for money or account access, it is not us — report it to alerts@gacs.app.

Three voluntary streams, none of them hidden: optional paid monitoring plans for families and creators who want continuous alerts, paid diploma courses at the GACS Academy alongside the free safety courses, and voluntary donations. The core safety tools — scam checks, the public registry, the guides, anonymous reporting — are free and ad-free, and no one can pay to influence a verdict or remove a registry listing. If the day comes when that stops being true, this answer is the first thing we'd have to lie about — which is exactly why we keep it public.

No — and this is important. GACS never cold-contacts anyone, and we never charge for recovery. Anyone who messages you claiming to be from GACS (or any legitimate-sounding service) offering to recover lost funds for a fee is running a 'recovery scam' — the second scam that specifically targets people who were just scammed. No legitimate service does this. If money left your account, your bank, card issuer, or exchange is the only party that can attempt a recall, and the clock matters — call them first.

No. GACS is a warning system, not a recovery service — we don't move money, contact scammers, or work with banks on your behalf, and we'd never charge to try. What reporting to GACS does do is warn the next person who checks that handle, number, or domain before they send money. For actual recovery, contact your bank or card issuer immediately, then file with the FBI's IC3 (ic3.gov) and the FTC (reportfraud.ftc.gov) — reports are what let investigators link victims to the same network.

Both, and they do different jobs. GACS publishes a public warning page so the next person who Googles the handle, number, or domain finds it before paying — that protection starts within days. FTC and IC3 reports feed US law-enforcement databases that can build cases and occasionally freeze transfers. GACS costs nothing, takes under a minute, and can be anonymous; the official reports take slightly longer but are how enforcement actually happens. Report to your bank first if money already moved.

Yes. You can file a report at /report without an account, and we don't publish reporter names, emails, or any identifying details — public pages show the scammer's identifiers, never the victim's. Screenshots you attach are reviewed by our moderators before anything is published, and personal information in them is stripped or redacted.

Every listing links to a public appeal form. Submit evidence of ownership or a correction and our reviewers re-examine it — verified owners are removed or corrected and added to the trusted-handle allowlist. We treat the right of reply as seriously as the report itself, because a false listing is a serious claim against a real person or business.

Each scan runs the account through 30+ signals: account age vs claimed history, handle similarity to verified owners, follower / engagement ratios, bio keywords associated with scams, the verified-handle registry, learned patterns from confirmed fraud reports, and live image hashing against known scam profile pictures.

On benchmark sets of confirmed impersonator accounts, the scanner currently flags 94% with a Caution or Danger verdict and produces a false-positive rate under 3% on verified owner accounts. Accuracy improves daily as confirmed reports feed the learning loop.

Verdicts are point-in-time. Scammers swap profile pictures, change handles, and add or drop blue checks within hours. We re-evaluate from scratch on every scan and incorporate the latest learned patterns.

Social profile scanning covers X (Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, Telegram, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Discord, Twitch, Snapchat, and WhatsApp. Beyond social, you can check any website domain, phone number, or crypto wallet address. One honest caveat: Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook hide profiles behind login walls, so on those platforms we combine handle analysis, registry matches, and community reports — and when a scan is blocked, the result page lets you paste the profile's visible text yourself for a full AI analysis. We tell you plainly what we could and couldn't verify, every time.

Act in the first hour if you can: call your bank's fraud line and ask for a transfer recall, then file reports with the FBI's IC3 (ic3.gov) and the FTC (reportfraud.ftc.gov). If you paid by credit card, dispute the charge; if by bank transfer, cite Regulation E for unauthorized transfers. Be extremely wary of anyone who contacts you offering to recover the money for a fee — 'recovery scams' specifically target people who were just scammed, and they are almost always the second scam. Our guides at /guides walk through the exact steps for PayPal, Zelle, Cash App, crypto, and bank transfers.

Yes. Scams are global and so is GACS — the scanners work on any domain, wallet, or social profile worldwide, and the site is available in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Our reporting guides cover the US (FTC, IC3), UK (Action Fraud / Report Fraud), Canada (Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre), the EU, and other regions, and each guide links to the right authority for your country.

Yes — the site is a responsive PWA. You can install it from your browser menu and run scans without opening the App Store.

No. Anonymous scans store only the target URL/handle/address and the verdict — never who scanned it. Authenticated users get a private scan history they own and can delete at any time. Read the full privacy policy at /privacy.

You get 1 free scan with no signup. After that, create a free account (Google, Apple, X, or email) for unlimited scans, your dashboard, saved scan history, alerts, and the watchlist. No payment, ever.

Never. GACS has no advertising, no third-party trackers that profile you, and no data brokers in the chain. We use first-party, IP-hashed analytics to see which tools help people, and nothing else. The entire business model is voluntary donations plus optional paid monitoring plans — you are not the product, and no one can pay to influence a verdict or a registry listing.

Yes. A scan checks our registry and public records about the target — it never opens the malicious site in your browser, never connects to your wallet, and never interacts with the scammer. We will also never ask for your seed phrase, private keys, passwords, or a deposit. Anyone claiming to be GACS and asking for those is impersonating us — report it to alerts@gacs.app.

On Cloudflare edge workers with a Supabase Postgres backend. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest.

Use the Report Scam button on any scan result, or go directly to /report — it takes under a minute and can be anonymous. Before anything is published, our reviewers cross-check your report against independent evidence: domain and wallet registration records, platform history, and patterns from other confirmed reports. Reports that can't be corroborated are held, never published. Once confirmed, the report becomes a permanent public page in the database so the next person searching that handle, number, or domain finds the warning first.

Every public warning page links to an appeal form. Submit evidence of ownership or correction and our reviewers will re-examine the listing — verified owners are removed or corrected and added to the trusted-handle allowlist. Being listed is a serious claim, and we treat the right of reply as seriously as the report itself.

Follow the step-by-step playbook at /someone-is-impersonating-me — it covers evidence collection, platform reporting, and follow-up.

Yes. Email proof@gacs.app from an address tied to the account, or use the contact form linked from the verdict page. Verified owners are added to the trusted-handle allowlist.

Browse it at /global-scam-database — every confirmed report becomes a permanent page so the next victim can find it via Google search.

Yes. The /creator-safety-toolkit page has the workflow. Upload your follower export or connect your account and we'll surface impersonators in your reply threads, fake giveaway accounts in your mentions, and recovery-scam DMs targeting your audience.

Yes — visit /badge after verifying ownership and copy the embed snippet. The badge shows live verification status and links to your authoritative account.

Yes — see /developers for endpoints and rate limits, or /api-docs for the OpenAPI spec.

Use the press inquiry form at /press-kit. We respond to credentialed press within 24 hours and can provide aggregated scam-trend data on request.

Open the feedback form at /feedback or email support@gacs.app. We answer every email.

See /responsible-disclosure for the security contact and our scope.