Last summer, I stumbled onto a brilliantly useful tool that ended up being one of the most well-received discoveries we’ve ever shared in these quarters.
It was seemingly so popular, in fact, that its hobbyist nature couldn’t keep up with the demand. The service struggled to juggle all the requests we (and other enchantingly informed internet-dwellers) sent its way. I lost count of the number of emails I received from readers who were wondering why their requests to the service were taking longer and longer to result in any action—if any action ever even occurred.
That tool was a simple email-based offering called Snitcher Space. Its purpose was to provide an easy way to forward over any email you open and, in a matter of moments, get back an intelligent analysis of how likely the email was to be legitimate vs. some sort of scam.
My friend and fellow fraud-abhorrer, I’m happy to share that the service is now back and better than ever—under a new name and identity, and with a substantially upgraded infrastructure beneath it—and ready to serve you properly.
This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures!
Your instant email scam scanner—take two
Allow me to introduce you to a powerfully revamped tool now known as EML Scanner.
➜ EML Scanner picks up right where its predecessor left off—and so far, at least, it’s been working impressively well for me.
⌚ It takes a total of a minute or two to start using.
✅ And you actually don’t even have to leave your inbox to do it:
- The next time you see something in your email that seems suspicious—or that you just aren’t entirely sure how much to trust—forward it to scan@emlscanner.com.
- Moments later, you’ll get a reply back from that same address with an in-depth analysis of the email and how safe and reputable it seems.
In my experiences with the service so far, the analysis has been coming back in under a minute. It’s almost instantaneous.
And it’s both delightfully detailed and refreshingly transparent about what it does and doesn’t know. In one test I tried with a marketing email I’d gotten from a tech news site, for instance, it noted that the sender identity was verifiable, the web links it presented were actually associated with the same organization—no “similar enough to be passable” URL tomfoolery—and it didn’t exhibit any signs of common scam patterns.
The analysis even included a suggested action, saying I could safely interact with the email and click through to accept the offer if I were interested.
For another test, I forwarded over an email I’d received that appeared to be about a SiriusXM class action settlement I was eligible to benefit from. There, the service was far less confident in its conclusions.
I can’t even begin to tell you how much I appreciate that honesty about the uncertainty of the verdict. With current-day AI tools in particular, there’s a troubling tendency for systems to act confident even when they don’t actually know what they’re talking about. EML Scanner, as you can see here, simply tells you what it does and doesn’t know and then makes a sensible suggestion based on that reality.
All you’ve gotta do is remember that address, scan@emlscanner.com—or add it into your contacts for even easier ongoing access—and then forward anything over for analysis, anytime you’re unsure.
- EML Scanner works entirely via email, by forwarding suspicious-seeming messages to scan@emlscanner.com.
- It’s free for up to one email a day. If you need more than that, you can pay 20 bucks a year and up to increase the limit—but for most common personal purposes, one a day will hopefully be plenty.
- The service’s privacy policy is crystal-clear about the fact that EML Scanner deletes all emails immediately after they’re analyzed, doesn’t store or share any sort of personal data, and doesn’t use any of your info for training, advertising, or any commercial purposes.
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