CYA Special Tools
Why? Which? And when to use each
What’s a special tool?
Cover Your Assets offers subscription-based tools that provide specific PREVENTATIVE capabilities that you can use INSTANTLY if and when the situation necessitates. The tools are intended to provide a degree of COMFORT and CONTROL, in order to hopefully help you avoid what might be a very stressful and painful experience. Each of the tools provides step-by-step, hand-holding instructions every time you use it.
Why these tools are important
For a long time people have been told that the way to spot a scam was bad spelling and clumsy English. That advice may have worked, but it is now dead. A scammer can produce flawless, warm, perfectly punctuated English in seconds – or any language, addressed to you by name. It will only get better.
So a well written message is no longer reassurance, and the old rule now works against people who learned it best. These three tools check something else entirely. They look at structure and content rather than style: where an address really goes, what sits after the @ sign, whether an ending is the one a company has always used, what a caller actually wanted you to do. Good writing is free now. A legitimate address still is not.
Each tool answers a different situation. You do not need all three at once – you need the right one for the moment you are in.
URLcheck
For an email that wants you to click something
The moment you would use it
An email shows you something to click: a colored line of words, an underlined address, or a button. You are about to click it, and something makes you hesitate. That hesitation is the moment. Once you have clicked, the warning your browser gives you comes too late.
What it does
You forward the email to checks@cyassets.com, then open URLcheck. It looks underneath the email, where you can’t see, and reports two things in plain words: who really sent it, meaning the real address behind the name, and where every link really goes. A link often shows only words, like “Click here to confirm,” while the real destination hides underneath. URLcheck uncovers what is hidden and tells you what it finds: a name that is nearly right but not quite, a familiar brand with an extra word bolted on, or an ending the company has never used.
What you get back
A verdict, the reasons behind it in ordinary language, and the chance to ask follow-up questions about anything that is still worrying you.
What it cannot do
It works only for emails. For a link in a text message, take a screenshot and use SCAMcheck. And it judges where a link leads, not what is on the pages there today, so a real company’s website that was broken into yesterday cannot be spotted from the outside.
SCAMcheck
For a message that has arrived and does not feel right
The moment you would use it
Something came in – an email, a text, a voicemail or a letter – and you are not sure whether to act on it. You photograph it or take a screenshot and hand it over to the app.
What it does
It gives you an opinion on the content of the message as a whole: what it is asking of you, whether the urgency is manufactured, and whether what is being demanded is something a real organization would ever ask for that way.
It then looks for three specific things inside the message and offers to check each one separately, one at a time, so the answers never run together.
- Who it came from – when the real address can be seen. What sits after the @ sign is what matters, not the name in front of it.
- Any web address written out in it – judged the same way URLcheck judges any other link.
- Any phone number in it – and whether it fits what the message claims to be about.
After every answer you can ask it questions in your own words, until you are satisfied.
What it cannot do
It only sees what the picture shows. If a message shows a button or the words “click here” rather than a written-out address, the real destination isn’t in the picture and cannot be judged. For an email, that is URLcheck’s job: forward it there instead. On a phone, the sender’s real address is often hidden behind a display name until you tap it, so tap the name first and then take a screenshot. Sometimes there is simply nothing to see.
It never opens a link. That is deliberate, because it means checking is always safe, but it also means a website that was broken into yesterday can’t be spotted from outside.
CALLback
For a number you are being asked to call
The moment you would use it
Somebody called and left a number. Or a message tells you to call a number urgently. There is nothing to photograph and nothing to read – which is exactly why the other two tools cannot help here.
What it does
It asks you four short things, and the four things together are the point:
- The number itself.
- How it reached you – a call, a voicemail, a text, a letter.
- Who they said they were.
- What they wanted you to do.
That last one carries the most weight. Any single request can be innocent; it is the combination that gives a scam away. Account details, then gift cards, then access to your computer is a pattern no real company produces. Then it tells you what it makes of it, and what to do next.
The rule underneath it
You do not call an unknown number back – not the ones that left a message and not the ones that left nothing. The number in front of you was chosen by whoever wants you to call it, which is precisely why calling it is never how you check. If it might be genuine, look the organization up yourself and call the number you found.
What it cannot do
It cannot look up the number. There is no list of known scam numbers and it will never pretend there is – it cannot tell you who owns a number. It gives you an informed opinion on the circumstances you describe.
Choosing between them
A rough rule: Something arrived? SCAMcheck. An email wants you to click on something? URLcheck. Somebody wants you to call them? CALLback.
They overlap on purpose. Picking the wrong one costs a minute; not checking is the only thing that costs anything.
What all three have in common
None of them opens a link or looks anything up, and none of them will ever pretend to. They read what is in front of them and give you an informed opinion – a guide, not a guarantee. They are for the moment you wonder. You were right to wonder!
IF IN DOUBT… do not react to it!
Want to see how each tool works, step by step? How to use each tool.