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Scam defence

Four surfaces · one card set

Before it happens, while it is happening, after it happened, and never again.

Most scam advice is a list of things not to click. This is the whole arc instead: the patterns, the doors worth shutting on a calm day, what to do in the ten minutes that actually matter, and the recovery order that keeps the evidence intact.

Drawn diagram · nothing here imitates a real screen, alert or account

Before — on a calm day

The two that are worth doing when nothing is wrong. They are the reason the other two stay short.

Before · learn the patterns

SHOAL

Twelve scareware and adjacent techniques, each with the one tell — the single detail that gives it away. Every card carries its authority citation and its confidence state.

Read the card set →
Before · shut the doors

Bulkhead

Sixteen controls in four groups. Not a scanner — a phone cannot be meaningfully scanned by an app running on that phone. It audits posture, and names what floods if a compartment is left open.

Check your posture →

During — the ten minutes that matter

A scam runs on a countdown. This surface opens by removing it.

During · triage

Right Now

Three questions in a fixed order — did money move, did anyone get in, is the device theirs. It sends you on to recovery only if one of those was actually true.

Triage what just happened →
After · recovery runbook

Salvage

Six phases in an order most people get backwards. Preserve is first and cleaning is fourth — deleting the messages is the one step that cannot be undone. It opens by telling most readers they are probably not hacked.

Work the runbook →

Watch

Five short narrated films, one per surface and one for the set. Drawn frame by frame — no stock footage, and nothing that imitates a real screen. Captions are burned in.

The whole arc — why four surfaces instead of a list of things not to click.
SHOAL: the one tell — what a card carries, and why unverified ones are published anyway.
Bulkhead: how far it travels — why this is a posture check and not a scanner.
Right Now: the clock is stopped — the countdown is the weapon.
Salvage: raised in order — preserve first, clean fourth, and the case that stops the page.

What this set will not do