Scameter is described by its host as the one-stop scam and pitfall search engine, and by the Hong Kong Government as the Police's. It accepts a payment account, a phone number, an email address or a URL, returning one of four ratings. The Suspicious Account Alert on the same data runs inside Hong Kong, not on a payment from Australia.
Fraud material on a corridor tends towards a record: what was reported, by whom, and how much was lost. Hong Kong publishes something of a different shape alongside that. It operates a search engine that takes an identifier, including a payment account, and returns a rating, and it is on the open web rather than behind a bank's login.
Key Takeaways
- Scameter is described by its host as the one-stop scam and pitfall search engine, and the Hong Kong Government describes it as the Police's Scameter.
- Its search categories include payment account, phone, email, URL, platform ID, IP address and hash value.
- It returns four ratings: red for high risk, orange for possible risk, yellow for potential risk, and purple for no record.
- Purple is stated not to guarantee safety, so an empty result is the absence of a report rather than a clearance.
- The Suspicious Account Alert built on the same data was extended on 4 August 2024 to cover payee account numbers, and runs on transfers made inside Hong Kong rather than on a payment arriving from Australia.
What the search engine accepts
The search interface offers a set of identifier categories rather than a single free-text box. Those categories include platform, username, platform ID, phone, email, URL, payment account, IP address and hash value. The site frames the search in its own words as covering a platform account name or number, payment account, phone number, email address or URL.
The payment account category is the one that matters to a corridor. A public fraud resource commonly operates on the contact channel, which is to say a phone number or a website, because that is what a member of the public tends to have. A search that reaches the account itself is a different instrument, because the account number is the thing a sender is given and the thing they type in.
The four ratings, and the limit the fourth states
The results are colour coded, and there are four.
| Scameter rating | What the site says it means |
|---|---|
| Red | High risk: a confirmed scam or high cyber security risk |
| Orange | Possible risk: similar fraud reports have been matched |
| Yellow | Potential risk, related to public scam reporting |
| Purple | No record, which the site states does not guarantee safety |
The fourth label is the one that describes the search engine's limits. Purple means no record, and the site states in the same place that no record does not guarantee safety. Orange and yellow are both defined by reference to reports, and red by a scam already confirmed elsewhere. So an identifier returning purple has not been matched to anything, which is a different statement from the account being sound. The Suspicious Account Alert page puts the same limit in its own words, that the absence of a high risk alert does not guarantee a safe transaction.
The Suspicious Account Alert, and what changed in August 2024
Alongside the public search sits the Suspicious Account Alert, which runs inside the Hong Kong banking system. The Hong Kong Government describes it as warning customers of high risk of fraud based on information of the Police's Scameter, so the two draw on one database and differ in where they run.
It launched in November 2023, and its original scope was narrower than it now reads. It covered fund transfers made using Faster Payment System proxy IDs, including a mobile phone number, an email address and an FPS Identifier. A transfer addressed to a plain bank account number fell outside it.
That gap closed with effect from 4 August 2024, announced on 1 August. Thirty-two banks and 10 stored value facility operators extended it, in the government's own words, to "retail customers' fund transfers at bank counters, and online fund transfers within the same bank or inter-bank/SVFs, using account numbers of the payees".
The wording a customer meets is published too: "Hong Kong Police Force warning: The payee account is related to a scam report. Please cancel the payment instruction. Call Police Anti-Scam Helpline 18222 if in doubt." That instruction is addressed to a customer of a participating Hong Kong institution, at the moment they are making a transfer, whether that is at a counter, in internet banking or at a machine. It is quoted here as the form the alert takes rather than as guidance, and a payment sent from Australia is not one of the transfers that triggers it.
Where the two instruments sit relative to a payment from Australia
The distinction between them is the timing and the location, and it decides which one bears on this corridor.
| Property | Scameter, the public search | The Suspicious Account Alert |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | On the open web | Inside a Hong Kong institution |
| When | Before a payment is made | As a transfer is being made |
| Who can use it | Anyone who can reach the page | A customer of a participating institution |
| Does it reach a payment sent from Australia? | Yes, if the sender searches before sending | No, it does not see the Australian leg |
The Suspicious Account Alert runs inside a Hong Kong institution, on a transfer being made by a Hong Kong customer. A payment originating in Australia is not a transfer that mechanism sees; it arrives as a correspondent credit, and the alert has no occasion to fire on the Australian leg.
The public search has no such boundary built into it. It is a website and it takes an identifier, and it answered a request from Australia, without an account, when this guide was written. That is a fact about one request rather than an undertaking about who may use it, and it is enough to place the check with the party at the sending end rather than the receiving one, before the payment exists rather than after it has gone.
The Australian dollar to Hong Kong dollar page carries the reference figures for the corridor, and the conversion page covers the pair.
What the search engine does not do
It does not decide anything. The rating is a report status, not an adjudication, and three of the four possible answers describe degrees of reporting rather than a finding. Red is the only one that names a confirmed scam, and even that is a statement about what has been established elsewhere rather than about the particular payment in front of the person searching.
Nor does it reach the money. A rating returned on an account number changes nothing about a payment already sent, and the search engine is not a channel for recovering one. Its whole function sits earlier than that, at the point where an identifier is being read off a message and typed into a form.
Where to look next
How international transfers work sets out the sequence a payment moves through, including the correspondent leg this corridor uses. What a payment rail is made of covers the infrastructure underneath a domestic transfer of the kind the Suspicious Account Alert governs. For the live reference figures, see the Australian dollar to Hong Kong dollar page.
Sources
- Hong Kong Government Information Services, expansion of Suspicious Account Alert for internet banking and physical branches transactions, 1 August 2024 - the attribution of Scameter to the Police, the statement that the alert works from information of the Police's Scameter, the November 2023 launch scope, the extension effective 4 August 2024 to payee account numbers, and the 32 banks and 10 stored value facility operators involved.
- CyberDefender, Scameter - the search interface, the identifier categories it offers including payment account, and the four risk ratings with their definitions.
- CyberDefender, High Risk Alert - the wording a customer is shown when the alert fires, the statement that an absent alert does not guarantee a safe transaction, and the full channel list including automated teller machines, which the government release of August 2024 does not reach.
General information about sending money to Hong Kong and about the fraud-reporting resources published there. Not financial advice, and not a recommendation of any product or institution. Reviewed by the Tradergy editorial team, September 2026.
Common questions
What is Scameter?
Scameter is described by the CyberDefender site that hosts it as the one-stop scam and pitfall search engine, and the Hong Kong Government describes the Suspicious Account Alert built on it as based on information of the Police's Scameter, a scam and pitfall search engine. A member of the public enters an identifier and receives a rating drawn from police reports and partner data.
Which identifiers can be searched on Scameter?
The search interface offers a set of categories including platform, username, platform ID, phone, email, URL, payment account, IP address and hash value. The payment account category is the one that reaches a bank account number, and the site frames the search as covering a platform account name or number, payment account, phone number, email address or URL.
What do the Scameter ratings mean?
Four colours are used. Red indicates high risk, a confirmed scam or high cyber security risk. Orange indicates possible risk, where similar fraud reports have been matched. Yellow indicates potential risk related to public scam reporting. Purple indicates no record, and the site is explicit that no record does not guarantee safety, so a purple result is the absence of a report rather than a clearance.
What is the Suspicious Account Alert and who runs it?
It is a mechanism inside the Hong Kong banking sector that warns a customer of high risk of fraud based on information of the Police's Scameter. It launched in November 2023 covering fund transfers made using Faster Payment System proxy IDs, including a mobile phone number, an email address and an FPS Identifier. The Hong Kong Government announced on 1 August 2024 that 32 banks and 10 stored value facility operators were extending it. It runs on a transfer being made by a customer inside Hong Kong, so it does not fire on the Australian leg of a payment sent from here.
Does the Suspicious Account Alert cover ordinary account numbers?
It does since the August 2024 extension. With effect from 4 August 2024 the Hong Kong Government described the widened scope as reaching retail transfers made at bank counters and online, within a bank, between banks and to stored value facilities, addressed by the payee's account number. Before that it reached proxy IDs only, so a transfer addressed to a plain account number was outside it.