ABOUT TUTELA DIGITALIS

This isn't a blog. It's a mission.

Tutela Digitalis, Latin for digital guardianship, exists because the advice most people are given about fraud is useless at the moment it matters. Be vigilant. Check the sender. Trust your gut. None of it survives contact with someone who does this for a living.

I've spent years studying how scammers operate — their scripts, their psychology, their infrastructure. I've helped victims navigate the aftermath: contacting banks, filing reports, rebuilding their digital security, and recovering emotionally from the violation of trust that fraud represents.

I came to it from an unusual direction. I sell for a living. And once you have spent enough years inside a sales pipeline, a scam stops looking like a trick and starts looking like a process you recognise: the list, the opening, the qualifying questions, the objection handling, the close, and the second call to the people who already said yes. Nobody falls for a scam. They get closed.

That is why this site explains why scams work on careful, intelligent people, instead of telling them to be more careful. The advice to "just be vigilant" fails for the same reason it fails on a showroom floor. A good close does not feel like pressure. It feels like your own idea.

So what replaces it? Not looking harder. The message is already flawless: real sender, real logo, the right caller ID, and a voice on the phone that can be your daughter’s. There is very little left in the artefact itself to catch.

What replaces it is friction. Say you will call back on a number you found yourself. Say you need to sleep on it. Say you are going to check with someone first. A real bank, a real employer and a real government office all survive that without flinching, because none of them needs your decision in the next ten minutes. A scam cannot, because every scam needs you to act now, inside the channel it controls.

This is not an argument for not looking. It is that looking is no longer enough on its own. The tell is not in the message. It is in the reaction to being slowed down.

Every guide here is built the same way. A claim, a primary source, and a link so you can check it without taking my word for it. When we get something wrong we publish the correction rather than quietly editing the page.

Expert commentary has been featured in Consumer World, The Local Germany, and ISPreview — each link goes to the piece itself.

P
Peter
Founder, Tutela Digitalis

What Tutela Digitalis is, in one minute

Tutela Digitalis is an independent, fully educational fraud-protection service. We do one thing, and we do it thoroughly: help you recognise, avoid, and report scams — in plain language, backed by named primary sources, and free.

How we help you
Learn it — in-depth, sourced guides on every major scam, from phishing to AI deepfakesCheck it — the free Scam Checker answers “is this a scam?” in about five minutesAsk us — a free, confidential case review, read by a real person and answered within 24 hoursReport it — a country-by-country directory of exactly who to report to, and how
When you need more than a guide

If you’re in the middle of a case and need someone to walk through your situation with you, that’s what a private consultation is for. We navigate you step by step through exactly what to do next — which bank line to call and what to say, how and where to report it, how to lock down your accounts, and what outcome is realistic. It’s the one thing we charge for, and it is guidance and teaching, never a promise to recover funds — because no honest service can promise that.

What we are not

We are not a recovery service — we never charge to get money back, because anyone who does is running the second scam. No products, no sponsored content, no data harvesting, and today no affiliate commission of any kind. Independent, ad-free, and thorough in everything we publish: every figure on this site is traced to a named primary source, and we cover the details most guides skip — country by country, scam by scam.

Areas of expertise

Tutela Digitalis publishes original analysis and reference datasets across the full surface of online fraud. The areas covered in depth on this site, and the topics I work on directly:

Phishing & email scams (smishing, vishing, quishing, BEC)
Investment & cryptocurrency fraud (pig butchering, fake platforms)
Romance scams & romance-baiting (incl. AI-powered variants)
AI-powered fraud (deepfakes, voice cloning, synthetic identities)
Online shopping & marketplace fraud (fake stores, dark patterns)
Identity theft (prevention, credit freezes, recovery)
Scam recovery (first-72-hours playbook, by payment method)
Business fraud (BEC, invoice fraud, employee training)
Imposter scams (government, family, recovery agencies)
Subscription traps & dark-pattern billing
Digital arrest / fake police & government calls
Task scams & gamified job fraud
Recovery scams (the second-stage scam targeting victims)
Fraud-reporting pathways by country (FBI IC3, FTC, Report Fraud, ACCC, IDCARE)

How I work

Most of the value on this site is free, because most people in fraud crisis cannot pay and should not have to. Paid services exist for cases that need depth.

FREE
Case Review — describe your situation at /get-help; expert reply within 24 hours. No upsell, no obligation.
FREE
Scam Checker — guided risk-assessment questionnaire at /scam-checker. Answers "is this thing I just received a scam?" in five minutes.
FREE
Reporting Directory — country-by-country guide at /report-a-scam covering FBI IC3, FTC, CFPB, Report Fraud, ACCC, IDCARE, and 14+ other agencies with plain-English "use this one when…" guidance.
PAID
Private Consultation — for complex cases (large losses, ongoing exploitation, business fraud, expert-witness work). Quick-assessment, deep-dive and business-audit tiers at /consultation.

I do not charge anyone to recover lost funds — any service that does is a recovery scam. Real recovery happens through your bank, the FBI IC3, FTC, and country equivalents (all free).

What makes Tutela Digitalis different

Every guide includes real-world experience from helping actual scam victims — not theoretical advice.

All statistics are sourced from verified organizations: FBI, FTC, APWG, Verizon DBIR, CrowdStrike, and more.

The content is written for humans in crisis — clear, direct, step-by-step. Not SEO filler.

Free educational content covers 90% of situations. Consultation is available for complex cases.

No sponsored content and no conflicts of interest. We earn no affiliate commission today, and if that changes it is disclosed on the page and never shapes a recommendation.

Editorial standards & how we fact-check

This is a YMYL ("your money or your life") site: people read it while they are being defrauded, so accuracy is not optional. Every page is held to the same standard:

Named primary sources only

Every statistic is traced to a named, authoritative source — a government agency, regulator, court filing, or established industry report — and cited with its date. We never publish an unsourced figure, a rounded-up guess, or an AI-generated statistic as our own.

Written from casework, then verified

Guides start from direct experience helping victims, not from rewriting other blogs or press releases. Once drafted, every factual claim is checked against the primary source before it ships.

Dated, because fraud data moves

Loss figures, scam scripts, and reporting channels change constantly. We date our figures and revisit pages so the advice reflects how the scam works now — not how it worked two years ago.

Corrected in the open

When a source is superseded we update the page. Example: when the UK retired Action Fraud in favour of Report Fraud in December 2025, we corrected every page that referenced it. Accuracy outranks looking finished.

No conflicts of interest

No sponsored content, no product placement, no data harvesting, and no affiliate commission at present. Nothing on this site is shaped by who pays us, because — apart from optional consultations — no one does. Our standing rule, whatever changes: a commission never buys a recommendation.

Our sources

Every claim on Tutela Digitalis is backed by verified data. Our primary sources include:

FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report
CrowdStrike Global Threat Report
Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG)
McAfee Cybersecurity Research
Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report
AARP Fraud Watch Network

Why I work under one name

You'll notice I go by my first name here — Peter — and you won't find my photo, my full identity, or my home city anywhere on this site. That's deliberate, and it's the same advice I give the people I help.

Studying fraud means studying the people who commit it. The more visible I am, the easier I become to target, impersonate, or pressure — and impersonation is exactly the weapon these groups use best. Protecting my identity keeps this work independent and keeps me free to say things others won't.

It also makes a point: you don't need to broadcast your whole life to be trusted, and neither do you. Guarding your identity isn't paranoia — it's basic digital hygiene. I just practice what I teach.

Frequently asked questions

Is Tutela Digitalis free?
Yes. Every guide, the Scam Checker, the confidential case review, and the country-by-country reporting directory are free and always will be. The only thing we charge for is an optional private consultation for complex cases — and even that is guidance and teaching, never a promise to recover funds.
Who runs Tutela Digitalis?
Tutela Digitalis is founded and written by Peter, who has spent years studying how scammers operate — their scripts, psychology, and infrastructure — and helping real victims through the aftermath. The site goes by a first name only, by deliberate choice: studying fraud makes you a target for impersonation, so guarding the founder's identity keeps the work independent.
Does Tutela Digitalis recover stolen money?
No. We never charge anyone to recover lost funds, because any service that does is running the second scam. Real recovery happens through your bank, the FBI IC3, the FTC, and their equivalents in other countries — all free. What we do is teach you exactly how to pursue those channels, fast and in the right order.
How does Tutela Digitalis make money?
Only through optional private consultations. There are no ads, no sponsored content, and we never sell or share visitor data. We currently earn no affiliate commission from anything on this site. If that ever changes it will be labelled on the page it appears, governed by our affiliate disclosure, and a commission will never decide what we recommend. That independence is the point: it lets us name names and say things others won't.
Is the free case review really confidential?
Yes. When you describe your situation at /get-help, it is read by a real person and answered within 24 hours. Submissions are kept private — never shared, sold, or published — in line with our privacy policy.
Where do the statistics on this site come from?
Every figure is traced to a named primary source — the FBI IC3, FTC, Verizon DBIR, APWG, Chainalysis, national regulators and police, and similar authorities — and is dated, because fraud data changes. We never publish an unsourced or AI-generated statistic as our own.

Contact

For media inquiries, expert commentary, or speaking engagements: press@tuteladigitalis.com

For personal help with a scam: Book a consultation →