Editorial Policy

Last updated: 17 October 2026

The Scam Exposed exists to help people, especially older adults, recognize and avoid scams. Because trust matters so much for this topic, we hold ourselves to clear editorial standards.

Our Sources

We base our articles and warnings on information from official and reputable sources, including:

• The Federal Bureau of Investigation and its Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).
• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
• State Attorneys General and other public consumer protection offices.
• User-submitted reports, which are reviewed before being published (see our Community Guidelines).

How We Write

We write in plain, simple English on purpose. Many of our readers are older adults who don't want legal jargon or scare tactics, they want clear, honest information they can act on. We avoid fear-based headlines and exaggerated claims. We do not use a scam story to sell a product.

Editorial Independence

Our articles and scam warnings are not influenced by advertisers or sponsors. See our Advertising Disclosure and Affiliate Disclosure pages for how we handle any outside relationships.

Review Process

Before publishing, content is checked for accuracy against the sources listed above. User-submitted scam reports are reviewed before they appear publicly, so that real businesses are not wrongly flagged. Our full sourcing standards are described in our Fact-Checking Policy.

How an Article Moves From Idea to Page

1. Source. We start from a primary record: a scam a reader or social media follower reported to us, an FTC or FBI report, a court filing, or a state attorney general notice.
2. Corroborate. Every figure is matched to its original source. If we cannot find the original, the figure is left out.
3. Classify. We label what we are describing: reported, suspected, or confirmed by an official action. We only call something confirmed when an agency or court has said so.
4. Write. The article is written in plain English by a named person, with links to every source.
5. Review. Facts, numbers, links, and phone numbers are checked again before publishing.
6. Publish. The article goes live with its publish date and author.
7. Monitor. We revisit articles when new data comes out, and show the updated date when we change them.
8. Correct. Errors are fixed under our Corrections Policy.

Publishing Standards and Volume

We publish a small number of thoroughly researched pieces rather than a large volume of shallow ones. We cap output at eight to twelve in depth articles each month so that every piece gets the research time it needs.

Before an article is published it must carry a named author byline, both a published date and a last updated date, at least three citations to authoritative primary sources such as the Federal Trade Commission, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center or the Department of Justice, and original analysis that is not simply a restatement of the source data.

Phone number pages follow a separate rule. Complaint counts come from public FTC and FCC data. A number page is only indexed by search engines once a real person has shared their experience with it through our comments, Facebook, Instagram or Reddit. Numbers without a first-hand report stay out of search engines.

Third Party Information

Phone numbers, opening hours and operator names for government helplines and other official resources are held in a single place on this site and re-verified against their official sources every three months. The date of the most recent verification is shown on our resources page.

Corrections

Scams change constantly, and even careful writers make mistakes. If you spot an error, we want to know. See our Corrections Policy for how to tell us and what happens next.

Questions

If you have a question about how a particular article was written or sourced, please reach out through our Contact page.