About r/Scams
In its own words:
Welcome to r/scams. This is an educational subreddit focused on scams. It is our hope to be a wealth of knowledge for people wanting to educate themselves, find support, and discover ways to help a friend or loved one who may be a victim of a scam. Please read the rules: https://reddit.com/r/Scams/wiki/rules and our wiki BEFORE posting. Please give posts appropriate, descriptive titles. Joking comments on serious posts will be removed. Be civil.
Community guide
r/Scams (#735, about 1.4 million subscribers) —. This is an educational subreddit focused on scams. It is our hope to be a wealth of knowledge for people wanting to educate themselves, find support, and discover ways to help a friend or loved… A recent sample averaged 120 posts a day (~56% text, ~24% image, ~18% gallery). Its public rules include: Be civil; Report recovery scammers; No personal information; No spam/off-topic; No low effort posts.
What belongs here
Stay inside the room’s stated scope rather than adjacent off-topic dumps. Self-promotion and ads are limited—read those rules before linking your own channel or shop. Low-effort or empty shitposts are often removed—add context that fits the purpose. Civility/anti-harassment rules apply; personal attacks get removed.
How it differs from lookalikes
Prefer this room when your post matches its description and rules—not merely a larger sibling community. The public rule list is long enough that skimming all entries once beats assuming defaults from similar subs.
Practical pointers
Read the live sidebar/rules before posting; rules can change. Common flairs include: Help Needed, Is this a scam?, Scam report, Victim of a scam. Volume is high—clear titles help your post survive the firehose.
The community was created on Jan 21, 2009, which makes it 17 years old. Since Nov 2, 2026, it has gained 2,084 subscribers (+0.15%). It sits just behind r/PokemonTCG (#735) and ahead of r/singing (#737) in our ranking.
What sets r/Scams apart
For its size it is unusually busy: about 83.4 new posts a day per million members, more than 94% of the Top 100. It is also one of the faster-growing big communities: its 1.27% gain since Sep 19, 2026 beats 94% of the Top 100. Its rhythm is strongly tied to time zones: the busiest hour (18:00 UTC) sees about 4.1× as many posts as the quietest (10:00 UTC).
Subscriber growth
Between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 9, 2026, r/Scams climbed from 1,424,793 to 1,442,872 subscribers (+18.1K, +1.27%). That is about 354 new members per day. The chart shows 10 weekly subscriber counts.
Top posts on r/Scams this week
This week’s highest-ranked posts, in Reddit’s own order (collected Nov 8, 2026).
- That Aha Moment When He Kept Asking My Account Balanceu/Significant_Horse645 · Nov 1 · text post
- [US] I received a Wolverine card in the mail from someone who had a brain injury trying to reconnect with her boyfriend?u/TheGoblinHoard · Nov 5 · gallery
- [US] My mom is dating Elon Musk.u/Internal-Policy-6810 · Nov 4 · text post
- [US] I received cash in the mailu/toripelle · Nov 5 · text post
- [US] Is this a scam or genuine wrong number?u/Financial-Math3034 · Nov 3 · image
- This is why it’s always better to hang up and don’t engage with scammers.u/Buffyredpoodle · Nov 3 · text post
- Car accident scam? I don’t understand what they wanted.u/SunSnip · Nov 6 · text post
- [US]Had a gut feeling this Russian romance interest was a scam.u/CrashCourse2012 · Nov 3 · text post
- [AUS] help! My dad has fallen prey to a pig butchering scam but he doesn’t believe itu/Rainbow_Bulldozer · Nov 7 · text post
- I keep getting calls from a scam debt company 10x a day. It won’t stop how do I get it to stop?!?u/Ok_Towel283 · Nov 6 · text post
All-time top posts
The highest-ranked posts in the history of r/Scams, from 2019 to 2025, ranked by Reddit.
- It happened to me: 30k gone.u/sjbailey99 · May 4, 2024 · text post
- Random number sent me Apple Cash. This is totally a scam, right?Oct 17, 2024 · image
- Neighbor claims that I hit both their cars and refuses to send dash cam footageAug 12, 2024 · 13,111 points · 774 comments · image
- My stolen phone ended up in China, I assume the scammer is screwed?u/brandawnnn · Oct 29, 2023 · gallery
- My uncle is going to Nigeria to marry a women who met on TikToku/AdviceIndividual7962 · Feb 15, 2025 · text post
- Found these in my checked baggage after an international flight from Asia to USA? They’re not mine. What do I do?u/WalkerTexasLaser · Nov 22, 2023 · gallery
- random person sent me $400 and asked for it back when i respondedu/takeurclothesoff · Feb 1, 2024 · gallery
- Apple gift Card Victim spotted in the wild.u/CONN_ECTICUT · Feb 8, 2025 · image
- [US] NovaraKasem CFP Influencer scamu/Rough_Poet_6092 · Aug 14, 2025 · text post
- My mother got scammed for at least $20k after everyone warned her. This was the last text she sent to me.u/nooneknows153 · Jul 24, 2022 · 6,258 points · 587 comments · image
What r/Scams talks about
We read the titles of 628 recent posts (Oct 29–Nov 5), the words that come up most are “scam”, “scammed”, “account”, “fake” and “email”. Other frequent themes are scammer, help, legit, website, warning and message. Recurring phrases include “job scam”, “phishing scam”, “scam alert” and “credit card”. By format, 56% are text posts, 24% are images and 18% are galleries.
Popular post flairs: Help Needed (192), Is this a scam? (158), Scam report (151), Victim of a scam (89), Informational post (37), Update post (1).
Activity and best time to post
r/Scams gets about 120 new posts a day. The public archive holds 578,507 posts and 4,358,560 comments in total, about 7.5 comments per post. Last week the busiest day was Friday (135 posts) and the quietest was Sunday (80). Posting peaks around 18:00 UTC and is lowest around 10:00 UTC.
Rules of r/Scams
The moderators of r/Scams list 15 rules. In short:
- Be civil
- Report recovery scammers
- No personal information
- No spam/off-topic
- No low effort posts
- No uncensored nudity or photos of dead people
- No personal army requests
- No private message requests
- No scambaiting
- No self promotion
How to join
Open reddit.com/r/Scams and press “Join”. Read the community rules in the sidebar before you post: every subreddit is run by its own volunteer moderators.
Frequently asked questions
How big is r/Scams?
r/Scams has 1,442,872 subscribers (Nov 9, 2026), which makes it the #736 safe-for-work subreddit in the SubMouse ranking. It added 18,079 members between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 9, 2026.
How old is r/Scams?
r/Scams was created on Jan 21, 2009, so it has been around for 17 years.
How active is r/Scams?
Very active: r/Scams gets about 120 new posts a day (average of the last four weeks). Over its lifetime the archive counts 578,507 posts and 4,358,560 comments. In a sample of 628 recent posts we counted 566 different authors.
When is r/Scams most active?
Based on post counts from Oct 29, 2026 to Nov 4, 2026, the busiest day was Friday and the quietest Sunday, and most posts arrive around 18:00 UTC, with the fewest around 10:00 UTC. More posts also means more competition, so a quieter hour can help a post get noticed.
What is r/Scams about?
The community describes itself as: “Welcome to r/scams. This is an educational subreddit focused on scams. It is our hope to be a wealth of knowledge for people wanting to educate themselves, find support, and discover ways to help a friend or loved one w…” Recent post titles often mention scam, scammed, account, fake and email. Most posts are text posts (56%).
Is r/Scams safe for work?
Yes. Reddit does not mark r/Scams as an 18+ (NSFW) community. SubMouse lists safe-for-work subreddits only.
How do I post on r/Scams?
Join the community on Reddit first, then use “Create post”. r/Scams accepts both text and link posts, with images, videos and galleries enabled. It has 15 posted rules, starting with: “Be civil”; “Report recovery scammers”; “No personal information”. Moderators remove posts that break the rules, so read them in the sidebar before posting.
Which communities are like r/Scams?
Communities with similar topics include r/educationalgifs (3M).
Stats from public data (data updated Nov 9, 2026; activity, rules and archive totals via the Arctic Shift archive, Nov 6, 2026; top posts from Reddit’s public feeds). Point and comment counts are archive snapshots and can be lower than on Reddit today. SubMouse is an independent directory and is not affiliated with Reddit or the moderators of r/Scams.