Terms and conditions of use

These conditions apply to all users of the Scamwatcher site, both to report scams and interact in the comments.

When you file a report or comment, even if you are anonymous, you must respect the law. This means in particular:

• no racist remarks or incitement to hatred
• no incitement to break the law in any way
• no defamation : Scamwatcher is for reporting scams, not for saying bad things about someone you don't like.
• no slander : Scamwatcher is also not used to say bad about your competitors…
• no dissemination of personal details : the details you enter are used to report fraudsters who use false identities or professionals whose practices violate the rights of customers. At no time does this give you the right to broadcast the personal details of a clearly identified person.

By default, European regulations and French law apply.

As on any forum or social network, your reports and comments are not verified before publication. This means that in case of non-compliance with the law, you are responsible. Scamwatcher only has a responsibility of content hosting: this means that our responsibility is limited to moderating the obviously illegal content that we detect or that is reported to us.

Scamwatcher stores the digital traces of your passage on its site for 1 year. In accordance with the law, if the authorities make a legally valid request for a clear reason, we may be required to communicate it. Apart from this precise case, these traces are never disclosed and are, for the majority, automatically deleted after one year. The exceptions concern technical traces showing fraudulent behavior (such as the writing of false notices, defamation or denigration for example). These elements may be used for legal purposes.

The reports on Scamwatcher are used to warn other Internet users of a scam that you have noticed. It is a community-based platform:

• Scamwatcher is not used to file an official complaint.
• Scamwatcher is a site published by the company Heretic SAS and is independent of any government agency.
• The Scamwatcher team regularly collaborates with the authorities who request it.

You encounter a difficulty on the site, we invite you to contact us.

The purpose of this document is to define the best practices to be respected in the context of social interactions on Scamwatcher, particularly through comments. These guidelines apply to all participants, whether they have an account or not.

Since May 2021, the acceptance of this charter is a prerequisite to the creation of an account or to its connection.

The users who file reports have different profiles. Some are experienced in the pitfalls of the internet, others less so and are looking for explanations or help. It should be kept in mind that a large majority of the reports are made by Internet users who do not know the platform. Based on this assumption, it is advisable to intervene in the comments with a benevolent approach:

• Use a neutral tone, without aggression or even mockery.
• Do not criticize the quality of the reports. If information appears to be missing, ask for clarification.
• Don't blame contributors: there is no need to push a victim or a careless user by insisting on his or her mistake.
• Without this being an obligation, thanks are always welcome … Don't hesitate to drop some on occasion.

The comments posted on Scamwatcher must keep the objective to bring a qualitative information and especially everything to be related to the report in question. In general, messages should have a helpful or information sharing objective.

Comments can therefore be used to:

• Confirm or not confirm a scam.
• Confirm a report.
• Ask for clarification to understand the situation.
• Ask for help while staying on topic of the referral.
• Provide assistance by offering actionable advice.
• Explain how a scam works

Comments should not be used to:

• Private exchanges with other members (private messaging is indicated for this)
• Share private information, such as your own email address (private messaging and private groups are the right way to share those)
• Disseminate irrelevant technical information to the majority (IP addresses or email source codes for example…)
• Advertising (including disguised advertising)

In spite of the intervention under pseudonymity, this forum is not a lawless zone. The respect of the French law is essential.

Applied to the comments, it is possible to bring some precisions by proscribing :

• Incitement to intrude into a computer system without authorization
• Identity theft
• Inciting the use of drugs or alcohol
• Insulting, racist, defamatory or even defamatory comments
• Writing fake reviews
• Harassment
• Infringement of a third party's rights, particularly in the context of the use of a visual avatar.
• The dissemination of pornographic or pedophilic content or images.
• …

This list is not exhaustive.

The user who decides to participate in community exchanges is subject to the following moral rules:

• Do not create several accounts on Scamwatcher
• Do not participate under several digital identities
• Limit spelling mistakes and the use of unpopular abbreviations.
• Do not misuse capital letters.
• Be sincere in your comments
• Personalize your comments as much as possible (in order to avoid SPAM). Copy and paste should be avoided whenever possible.
• Do not use technical devices to hide your real identity (VPN, Proxies, Tor networks…)

When the conditions indicated in this document are not respected, the administrators and moderators are likely to apply limitations to the account of the member having carried out the infringements. These limitations can be applied automatically or manually. Here are the limitations that can be applied

• Temporary or definitive limitation of rights linked to the account (rank, number of comments,…)
• In the extreme, deletion of the account.
• Deletion of comments / reports related to the infraction or even to the account if it is deleted.

In order to provide targeted advertising services to our users, we may share the email addresses of users who have submitted fraud reports with third parties. This data sharing is carried out solely for the purpose of allowing these third parties to perform services on our behalf. Our privacy policy will clearly outline this practice, and affected users will have the option to opt out of such data sharing at any time. It is important to us that we maintain the trust of our users, and as such, we will only share the minimum amount of data necessary with these third parties, and will ensure that they are bound by strict confidentiality agreements. Please note that we will only be sharing email addresses with these third parties and no other personal data will be shared. This data sharing will only affect users who have submitted fraud reports and not all of our users.