Is this brand deal a scam? 12 checks before you reply

A fake sponsorship is cheap to send and expensive to fall for. The good news: almost every one of them trips at least one of the checks below, and you can run all twelve in about two minutes.

What the message asks you to do

1. Any payment from you. A real brand pays you. "Just pay shipping", a registration fee, a

refundable deposit for the product: all of these are the scam itself, not a formality.

2. Buy first, get reimbursed later. The reimbursement never comes, and you have no contract

to chase it with.

3. A file to download or run. "Our game build", a password-protected archive, an installer.

Password protection exists so the file skips your antivirus scan.

4. Instructions to ignore a security warning. Nobody legitimate tells you to click "More

info then Run anyway" or to switch off Defender.

5. A login code, a password, or a document scan. A code you read out is a code that takes

over your account. No campaign needs your passport to send you a serum.

6. Crypto or gift cards. No brand pays its creators in gift cards.

Who it comes from

1. The domain, not the display name. "Meta Brand Partnerships" in the From line means

nothing. Look at the address after the @. A free mailbox writing on behalf of a company is a red flag on its own.

2. Look-alike spelling. A digit standing in for a letter, a hyphen where the real domain has

none, the brand's name glued to an extra word. Compare it with the address on the brand's own site, character by character.

3. The handle's history. An account created last month with no posts, or one whose name is

the brand plus a string of digits.

Where the link goes

1. The link text versus the link target. Hover, or long-press on mobile. If the words say

one site and the status bar says another, stop.

2. Where the form lives. A brand's onboarding form lives on the brand's domain, not on a

free form builder with the logo pasted at the top.

3. The urgency. "We're picking creators in 24 hours" exists to stop you doing steps 7 to 11.

A real partner can wait a day while you confirm who they are.

When it passes every check

Passing means no known signals were found, not that the offer is real. Verify independently: find the brand's site yourself, use the contact route published there, and ask whether the person who wrote to you works in their creator team. Then read the terms before you sign anything.

DealShield runs these checks for you, on your device, on the message you already have open. It never tells you a message is safe, because nobody can: it tells you what it found, quotes the exact words that raised each flag, and says what to verify.