The 5-Minute AI Scam Checklist

1. If a message or call asks for money, information or speed

• Stop for sixty seconds. Pressure to hurry is itself a warning sign.
• Hang up. Call back on a number already saved in your phone, never one you were just given.
• For a bank or company, type the web address in yourself instead of following a link.
• Send no money, passwords, codes, gift cards or remote access until you have confirmed independently.
• If it was fraud, tell your bank first, then report it, then tell the people around you.

2. Warning signs to look for together

Any one of these can be innocent. Two or three at once is a reason to stop.

• The caller never says your name, or their own.
• An unfamiliar number is explained away before you can ask about it.
• There is a deadline, or a reason it cannot wait.
• You are asked to keep it from someone who would normally be told.
• Payment is to a destination you have never used with this person before.
• The request arrives out of the blue, from a story you cannot verify.

3. If you are looking at an image or video

• Check hands, teeth and any writing in the picture.
• Check that every shadow falls the same way, and reflections match.
• Watch the mouth against the sound, and watch blinking.
• Look at the account that posted it. Age, history, comments turned off.
• Ask what it wants from you. Almost all of these end in money or a login.

No single detail proves anything. Detection is about the source, not the pixels.

4. On a phone call you think may be cloned

• Interrupt. Ask something only the real person would know.
• Cloned voices handle a script well and unexpected questions badly.
• Say you will call them straight back, then dial the number you already have.

5. Your family plan

Fill this in together, before anything happens.

• Everyone agrees that nobody is ever judged for calling to check.