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Protection · Scam Detector
Is this text a scam? Check a message before you click
Paste a suspicious text message, email, DM or link into the Scam Detector and it tells you how risky it looks, why, and what to do. Apple Intelligence checks it on your Mac, alongside the app's own rules; when Apple Intelligence isn't available, or you ask for an Enhanced Check, our server takes a look too.
macOS 26 Tahoe or later · No credit card · Everything runs on your Mac
How to check if a message is a scam
Phishing texts and scam emails are written to make you act before you think: a parcel that can't be delivered, an account about to be locked, a refund waiting, crypto ready to withdraw. Each one, on its own, can look believable. The giveaways are in the details, such as a link to a site that isn't the company's, a request for a code, or a deadline that doesn't need to exist.
The Scam Detector looks for those details for you. Copy the message, paste it into Scam Detector, and click Analyze. You get a verdict in a few seconds, before you tap the link.
What you get back
Each check gives a risk level, one sentence of advice, and a list of reasons under Why, each pointing to something in the message.
| Risk | What it means |
|---|---|
| Info | No obvious red flags. |
| Low | Some minor signals; check who sent it before you reply. |
| Medium | Suspicious. Check through a channel you already know, not the message, before doing anything it asks. |
| High | Almost certainly a scam. Don't click its links or share codes. |
The red flags it looks for
Every check runs a set of rules on your Mac, whatever else happens. They look for:
- Urgency and threats: "final notice", "suspended", "within 24 hours".
- Requests for passwords, verification codes, card numbers or a crypto wallet's recovery phrase.
- Prizes, refunds and money waiting to be withdrawn or moved.
- A push to log in or click a link instead of going to the company yourself.
- Suspicious links: addresses on throwaway domain endings, a bare IP address, lookalike characters, words like "verify" or "login" in the site name, or a link that hides the real site after an
@. - Links to link shorteners and free publishing or form sites, which let anyone put a phishing page under a familiar-looking name.
- The marks of bulk spam: a greeting with no name or a date where the name should be, invoice and transaction numbers to look official, and text written mostly in capitals.
The rules catch the obvious cases quickly. A language model then reads the message as a whole, which catches what rules can't, such as a sender that doesn't match the content or a story that contradicts itself.
On your Mac with Apple Intelligence
With Apple Intelligence on, Analyze runs entirely on your Mac, using Apple's on-device model, and the message goes nowhere. The model's verdict is combined with the rules' findings: it can raise the risk the rules found, but never talk it down, so a message the rules flag stays flagged.
If Apple Intelligence declines to read a message because it looks unsafe, that is a warning sign in itself, and the result is at least Medium.
Enhanced Check and the server check
When Apple Intelligence is off or unavailable on your Mac, Analyze sends the message to our server for a second opinion instead. With Apple Intelligence on, you can still ask for one with Enhanced Check. Either way the rules run on your Mac too, and the same rule applies: the server can raise the risk, never lower it.
If the server can't be reached or a usage limit has been reached, you still get the on-device result, with a note saying so.
A server check sends only the text you pasted, your IP address and a random identifier the app creates once per installation, used for usage limits. Our server passes the message to MiniMax's language model for analysis. We don't store or log the message; the identifier, IP address and time are kept for at most two days. The Privacy Policy has the details.
Scams that come through a website
The Scam Detector checks a message you paste. To stop the scam and phishing sites themselves from loading, in any browser or app, turn on Web Protection.
Questions about Scam Detector
Not with Apple Intelligence on: Analyze runs on your Mac. It is sent to our server only when Apple Intelligence is off or unavailable, or when you click Enhanced Check, and it isn't stored. The Privacy Policy lists exactly what is sent and kept.
No. Without it, the Scam Detector uses its own rules on your Mac plus a check on our server. With it, the check runs on your Mac and the server is only used when you ask for an Enhanced Check.
Yes. Paste just the link and it is checked like any message, for lookalike characters, risky domain endings, link shorteners and the other signs of a phishing link. The more of the message you paste, the more there is to go on.
No. It only sees what you paste into it. It doesn't read your Messages, Mail or any other app.
Scam texts sometimes include instructions aimed at AI. The checker is told to treat the message as something to analyse, never to follow, and because the language model can't lower the risk the rules found, a message can't talk the result below what the rules saw. If a verdict seems wrong, trust your instinct and contact the sender through a channel you already know.
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