Why StopBastards exists, who built it, and what it is really for.
StopBastards started from something very simple: my parents were at risk of being scammed.
I am a son, with parents who receive strange messages. SMS, emails, phone calls, fake delivery notices, QR codes to pay, urgent links, requests that look real.
Over time I trained them to do one single thing:
before clicking, they call me.
And I have to say they do it almost every time now.
The problem is that I am not always available. I might be at work, travelling, in a meeting, without my phone, busy, tired, distracted. But scams do not wait for the right moment.
StopBastards was built for exactly this. Not to replace a son or a trusted person — but to provide a first check that is simple, immediate, and understandable.
The name is direct because scams are. Every day someone tries to steal money, passwords, codes, accounts, identity and peace of mind from ordinary people. They often target those who trust, those who did not grow up inside the internet.
We could call them "cybercriminals" or "malicious actors". But when they try to scam your mother or father, the word that comes to mind is simpler.
Bastards.
It is built for parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, family members — people who do not live inside technology all day long.
But it is also built for those who help them. Because often —
the real anti-scam system of a family is a person.
A son, a daughter, a grandchild, a friend, a neighbour. StopBastards tries to help right there: in the moment between doubt and the click.
StopBastards exists for that moment.
— the son who wrote StopBastards