ScamMeTwice

About

ScamMeTwice is a community website where people report scams, such as fake taxis, fraudulent shops or tourist traps, and anyone can search them by description, place, tag or nearby location. The companion ScamSafe browser extension (Chrome and Safari) shows the warnings right inside Google Search and Google Maps: reported businesses get a red outline and a ! badge, and clicking the badge opens their latest reports.

Highlights

• Search by text, tag or nearby location
• ScamSafe warnings inside Google Search & Maps
• Moderation with a fair dispute process
• Public, rate-limited search API

How it works

1. 1Users verify their email, then post scams with photos, location and tags.
2. 2Search uses PostgreSQL full-text search, matches the start of words ("airp" finds "airport"), filters by tags and ranks scams near the user higher. With no search text, it shows scams trending nearby.
3. 3Admins moderate but don't post. New posts can wait for review before going public, and a notification bell keeps authors, reporters and admins up to date.
4. 4Logged-in users can dispute a published scam with their side of the story. Admins accept or reject it with a reason, and accepting hides the scam.
5. 5A public, rate-limited search API (/api/scams/search, /api/tags) lets other apps use the data.
6. 6ScamSafe reads business names, phones, addresses and websites from Google pages, looks them up in batches, caches results (24h on a match, 6h on a miss) and never sends what the user searched for.

Why it matters

Victims can warn others, and travellers and shoppers can check a business before paying. The extension puts that warning exactly where people decide, in Google Search and Maps, while the dispute process protects honest businesses from false reports.