Everyday Scam and Fraud Resistance Assessment for ConsumersHalf of these are real. Which ones would you have refused, and which would you have paid?
Sixteen messages, calls and requests that arrive in ordinary life, eight of them genuine, plus twenty-two exercises on how these approaches actually work — scored as two figures that are never added together, and reported as five if-then rules drawn from your own answers.
A report you would send to a parent or a friend
The Everyday Scam and Fraud Resistance Assessment is a twenty-minute knowledge check of how well a person tells an engineered fraudulent approach from a genuine one in their own life — texts, calls, invoices, prizes and job offers — reported as two figures, how much you catch and how much genuine you keep, with one if-then rule per family.
Most fraud-awareness quizzes are built so that suspicion wins: every stimulus is a trap, and the person who refuses everything gets full marks. That is not judgement, and it has a cost in ordinary life — the prize collected from a shop you entered a draw with, the sibling on a friend's phone, the discount code from a shop you use, the rent paid on time. Half the stimuli here are genuine by design, and the report prints what refusing everything would have scored on this sitting, beside your own figures, so the habit is priced rather than rewarded.
Every stimulus carries a declared figure for how many ordinary people call it wrong, and a subtle one counts for more than an obvious one. That figure is printed beside your own call on every row, for a reason: these are engineered approaches built by people who do this all day, and being fooled by one is not a character flaw. Nothing on the report describes anybody who was fooled as careless or at fault, and the report says so before it says anything else.
The page is built out of the one part of any report people act on. For each of the five families — urgency and pressure, identity and channel checks, payment and irreversibility, too good to be true, and what to do after — there is one boxed rule in your own first person: a specific moment, and a specific thing to do in it. Each rule is drawn from the stimulus you missed, with what you chose and the keyed call printed underneath it, and where you missed nothing the rule is the habit to keep, written down so it survives a bad day.
Every figure carries its 68 and 95 per cent band, drawn and written in plain words, and the report says what zero means: an ordinary respondent answering the way people typically answer, computed from a prior declared on every option. Those priors are authored assumptions stated in the open, and observed answers replace them once they exist. The knowledge families carry too few exercises for a number, so each carries a placement in words, and the refusal is printed rather than rounded away.
No real bank, company, platform, courier, government department or agency is named anywhere. No country's emergency number, reporting body or law is relied on, so the same sitting is fair wherever it is taken. And nothing in it teaches a method: every exercise diagnoses recognition and none supplies a script. Every exercise is an original work, and the instrument is not affiliated with any commercial instrument, certification or consumer-protection body.
What you walk away with
How many of the eight lures you called correctly, weighted so a subtle one counts for more, against what an ordinary respondent scores.
How many of the eight genuine approaches you kept, on the same weighting. Printed beside caught, never folded into it.
One sentence from the shape of the pair — you check then act, you refuse first, you trust the channel — guarded so it cannot be read as a horoscope.
One boxed if-then rule per family, drawn from the stimulus you missed, with what you chose and the keyed call printed under it.
Each of the sixteen, subtlest first, with your call and how many of 100 ordinary people call it wrong.
Which payments come back, what a caller's knowledge proves, and what belongs in the first hour after a loss — placed in words, never a number.
Inside your report
Illustrative sample — your report is generated from your own responses.
Caught and kept are printed side by side and never added. Refusing everything scores the top-left corner and accepting everything the bottom-right, both computed on your sitting's own priors, so neither habit can pass for judgement. The cross lines are the 95% bands.
If a buyer overpays me and asks for the difference back, then I will ask them to cancel and pay the right amount, and send nothing back myself.
70 of 100 ordinary people call this one wrong. It is built to be called wrong.
If a shop I entered a draw with says I have won and asks for nothing, then I will collect it from the shop in person, rather than deleting the message.
64 of 100 ordinary people call this one wrong. It is built to be called wrong.
If anybody who contacts me seems to know who I am, then I will keep treating that as no proof at all, and check through a number I hold.
Each rule names one moment and one thing to do in it, drawn from the stimulus you missed, with what you chose and the keyed call printed under it. Where you missed nothing, the rule is the habit to keep.
Built for
- Anybody who gets texts, calls and emails and would like to know which ones they would have paid
- Families who want something to send to a parent, a grandparent or a first-time earner
- Students and people managing their own money for the first time
- Employers and community groups running consumer-awareness programmes who want a measurement rather than a leaflet
Find out which ones you would have refused, and which you would have paid
38 exercises across five formats · about 20 minutes · two figures never combined, five rules drawn from your own answers, and the priors printed beside every stimulus.
Take free · full report ₹249 (incl. GST)
Frequently asked questions
No. This is about the messages, calls, invoices, prizes and job offers that arrive in a person's own life, not an employee's inbox. Every setting is domestic, and it reports how much you catch and how much genuine you keep, never one score.
Because without them, refusing everything would score full marks, and the instrument would be measuring suspicion rather than judgement. The report prints what refusing everything would have scored on your sitting, beside your own figures, so that habit is visibly priced.
No, and it says so before it says anything else. Every stimulus carries a declared figure for how many ordinary people call it wrong, printed beside your own call, because these are engineered approaches and being fooled by one is not a character flaw.
No. Every stimulus is generic, no country's law or reporting body is relied on, and every exercise diagnoses recognition rather than supplying a method or a script.
About twenty minutes for thirty-eight exercises. ₹249 in India, inclusive of GST, or US$2.99 elsewhere. Below ₹300 the sitting is free to take, and the report is the product.
Each one takes a single capability, puts you inside the situations where it is actually tested, and scores your choices against published evidence — with a report designed for that capability alone, not a template. They span hiring, compliance, education, operations and personal skill.
Browse the catalogue →Methodology: Thirty-eight original exercises across five formats: sixteen single-choice stimuli, each a message, call or request arriving in a person's own life with one keyed call; eight true-or-false claims about how these approaches actually work; six select-every-that-applies exercises; four match-the-following exercises; and four numeric estimation exercises. One response instruction is declared for the whole instrument and it is a KNOWLEDGE instruction, what is the right call here, never what the respondent would do. Construct statement: this measures how well a person tells an engineered fraudulent approach from a genuine one in everyday domestic life, and what they know about how such approaches work; it does not measure intelligence, carefulness, general suspicion, whether the person would act under real pressure, or anything about their character, and a person who has been defrauded is not described anywhere on the report as careless or at fault. Scoring is asymmetric-lure detection with a declared take-up prior. Every stimulus is classed as a lure or as genuine, and half of them are genuine by design, because without that balance refusing everything would be the winning strategy and the instrument would measure suspicion rather than judgement. Each stimulus carries a declared prior: the share of ordinary respondents expected to call it correctly, authored per option. Each stimulus is weighted by one minus its prior, so a subtle item counts for more than an obvious one. Two figures are computed and never combined: caught, the weighted share of lures called correctly, and kept, the weighted share of genuine approaches called correctly. Each is corrected against what an ordinary respondent would score with the same weights, so zero means no better than the way people typically answer, and each carries its standard error band from an assumed omega that is printed unrounded. A figure is printed only when at least eight stimuli of that class were answered; otherwise a three-way placement is printed with the refusal. The report also prints what a person who refuses everything and a person who accepts everything would score on this sitting, so that habit is priced rather than rewarded. The knowledge exercises are corrected against the declared per-option priors and reported per family as a three-way placement, because no family carries eight of them. Every declared prior is an authored assumption stated in the open and will be replaced by observed answer shares once live data exist. A careless-responding flag count is computed for the operator and never shown to the respondent as a judgement. Sources drawn on: Cialdini, Influence (authority, scarcity and social proof as compliance levers); Stajano and Wilson, Understanding scam victims: seven principles for systems security (2011); Lea, Fischer and Evans, The psychology of scams (2009); Whitty, The scammers persuasive techniques model (2013); Button, Lewis and Tapley, Not a victimless crime: the impact of fraud on individual victims (2014); Cross, No laughing matter: blaming the victim of online fraud (2015); Langenderfer and Shimp, Consumer vulnerability to scams (2001); Modic and Lea, How neurotic are scam victims, really? (2012); Gollwitzer and Sheeran, Implementation intentions and goal achievement, a meta-analysis (2006); Macmillan and Creelman, Detection Theory: A User's Guide (2005) for the two-error framing; Norris, Brookes and Dowell, The psychology of internet fraud victimisation: a systematic review (2019); and Haladyna, Downing and Rodriguez (2002) for the item-writing rules. All exercises are original works written for this instrument. No real company, bank, platform, courier, government department or agency is named anywhere, no country's reporting body or law is relied on, and nothing in the instrument supplies a method for running any approach. This instrument is not affiliated with, endorsed by or derived from any commercial instrument, certification or consumer-protection body.