How to Check If a Text Is a Scam on Your Android Phone

If you get a text about a parcel, a bank, a toll or a job offer and you are not sure, your Android phone can check it for you. There are four separate AI features that do a version of this job, they live in four different places, and only two of them are switched on without you doing anything. This page is the complete list: what each one does, which phones and countries get it, whether it is already on, and the exact setting to find it. Everything here is read off Google's own help pages, dated, with the gaps named.

Key Takeaways

• Circle to Search is the one you do on demand. Long-press the Home button or navigation handle, circle the message, read the verdict. Google documented this use on October 15, 2026.
• Scam Detection for chat messages is already on. Google: "Scam Detection for chat messages is on by default." It warns you on the notification, before you open the message, across "many popular apps."
• It covers 55 countries and 9 languages on Google's Android-wide help article, read on October 25, 2026 -- far more than the 11 regions Google's Pixel article lists for the same feature.
• Google Messages filtering is a third, separate thing, with three settings rather than two: Enhanced, Standard or No protection. Standard is the default and works on-device; Enhanced sends message data to Private AI Compute.
• Scam call detection is Pixel-only and off by default. Google: "The feature is off by default. The user has to actively opt in." Pixel 9 and later run it on Gemini Nano on-device.
• Circle to Search may not work where you need it most. Google's warning: "This feature may not work in some apps, such as banking, medical and other confidential apps." The Google Lens screenshot route is the workaround.
• None of it is a verdict. Google's own caution: "Scam Detection may not catch every scam. Be careful when you share personal info or tap on links."

The Four Checks, Side by Side

Check a Message Right Now With Circle to Search

This is the one to use when a specific text has already landed and you want an answer in ten seconds. Google documented it as a scam-checking tool on October 15, 2026, and the steps are three:

1. Long-press the Home button or the navigation handle at the bottom of your screen. A search bar and a glow appear.
2. Draw a circle around the message you are unsure about.
3. Read the result. Google: "Our systems will use AI and information from the web to assess whether the message is likely a scam. You'll receive an overview with guidance and insights including suggested next steps."

Google's own advice on what to do with a bad result: "If the results show red flags, consider deleting the message and blocking the number."

Which phones. Google's Search help article states the floor: "This feature is currently available on select models of Android phones including Pixel 6 and later." Google's blog footnote adds the standard hedge: "Results, availability, and compatibility may vary."

The limit worth knowing before you rely on it. Circle to Search reads what is on your screen, and Google says some screens are off limits: "This feature may not work in some apps, such as banking, medical and other confidential apps." That is exactly the category a convincing scam message tries to pull you into, so have the fallback ready.

The fallback is Google Lens. Google's instructions: take a screenshot of the suspicious message, open the Google app, tap Google Lens, select your screenshot from the gallery, and tap Search to get "results and safety warnings about the content."

To turn Circle to Search off entirely: open Settings, search for Circle to Search, tap it and turn it off. On a Pixel, Settings, then System, then turn off Circle to Search.

The Warning You Already Get, and Did Not Ask For

Scam Detection for chat messages is the check most people are already protected by without knowing. It works one step earlier than Circle to Search: rather than you checking a message, your phone flags the notification before you open it.

How it shows up. Google: "Possible scam message notifications have a red warning icon and display a 'Likely scam' button when expanded." Tap Likely scam to see the explanation, More details for more, then either Done to confirm it was a scam or Not a scam to dismiss it.

It is on by default, and the switch is deliberately easy to find: "On your phone, open the Settings app. Search for 'Scam Detection.' Turn Message scams on or off."

The 55 countries. Google's Android help article lists these, read live on October 25, 2026: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, French Guiana, Germany, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Japan, Martinique, Mexico, Montserrat, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The nine languages: Arabic, English, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.

Google's two pages do not agree, and the Android one is the wider. The Pixel version of this article lists eleven regions (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, UK, US) and eight languages, leaving out Korean. The Android-wide article lists the 55 above. If you are in, say, Chile or South Korea, the Android article says you are covered and the Pixel article does not mention you. We have not found a Google surface that dates the expansion.

Two behaviours that catch people out. First: "If you mark a message as 'Not a scam,' Scam Detection is turned off for that conversation for a while." Train it wrong on a message that really was a scam and you lose the warnings on that thread. Second, Google's blanket caution: "Scam Detection may not catch every scam."

What leaves your phone. Google: the feature "runs in a secure, isolated environment to identify suspicious patterns," and "your message content remains private and isn't sent to Google, unless you choose to share it." Sharing is a choice you make after an alert, and Google says "only the selected message content will be shared, without common identifying info."

Google Messages Has Its Own Switch, With Three Positions

This is a different feature from the one above, in a different place, and it is the one that stops a scam text reaching you at all. Google Messages "can prevent those messages from being delivered and hide them in the 'Spam and blocked' folder."

The three settings, and what each one does to your data:

To change it: open Google Messages, tap your profile picture or initials at the top right, then Messages settings, Protection and Safety, Spam and scam protection, and pick one.

One thing does leave your phone even on Standard. Google is specific: "If a message contains a URL, it uploads that URL to Google to verify that the link is safe." It also checks whether an unknown sender "has been identified as a spammer by our system," and says it "temporarily stores phone numbers of messages received from non-contacts." Google says it does not store persistent identifiers like your name or phone number, so "Google doesn't know who you're messaging."

Scam Calls: Pixel Only, and You Have to Switch It On

If the scam arrives as a phone call rather than a text, the AI check is a different feature with much narrower availability, and unlike the message checks it is off until you turn it on.

Google's words: "The feature is off by default. The user has to actively opt in to turn on the feature."

Who can use it:

Google adds a condition people miss: "Scam Detection only works with a SIM card associated with one of the countries listed below and while the Pixel device is in one of those countries." A UK SIM on holiday outside the list does not get it.

To switch it on: open the Phone app, tap More, then Settings, then Scam Detection, and turn it on.

What it runs on. Google: "For Pixel 9 and later devices: Scam Detection is powered by Gemini Nano on-device. For earlier devices: Scam Detection uses Google's on-device machine learning models." All processing is on-device, and "no conversation audio or transcription is stored on the device, sent to Google servers or anywhere else."

It announces itself. "To let participants know that the feature is turned on, Scam Detection will have an audible beep at the start of the call and every few minutes after." If the likelihood of a scam is high you get a notification, a sound and a vibration, with End call on the call screen.

To turn it off for one call: More, then Scam Detection from the in-call screen. For all calls: Phone app, More, Settings, Scam Detection.

What to Actually Do This Week

Check the two that should already be on. Settings, search "Scam Detection," confirm Message scams is on. Then Google Messages, profile picture, Messages settings, Protection and Safety, and confirm you are at least on Standard. "On by default" and "on" are different things on a phone that has been through several years of settings.

If you have a Pixel, switch on call Scam Detection. It is the only one of the four that does nothing until you ask, and it covers the attack that costs people the most money.

Learn the Circle to Search gesture now, while you are not panicking. Long-press the Home button or navigation handle. Practise it on any message. The point of a ten-second check is that you will actually use it at the moment you need it.

Decide about Enhanced protection deliberately. It is the only switch on this page that moves your message data off your phone, into Private AI Compute. Google says it stays encrypted and private to you. That is a real trade, and it is yours to make rather than a default.

Do not treat a clean result as safety. Every one of these features carries a Google-written caution that it will miss things. They are there to slow you down before you tap a link, not to certify that a message is genuine.

Related Reading

The keyboard-level version of this -- a "Likely scam" chip that appears above your keys when you start typing a reply -- arrived in the September 2026 Pixel Drop, US only, on Pixel 6 and newer. That page also covers the earlier notification rollout and where Google's two availability pages disagreed at the time.

If you want to know what else Google has put into your Pixel keyboard, Rambler on the Pixel 11 is voice typing that rewrites you rather than transcribing you. And if your instinct after reading this is to audit what AI is doing in the Google apps you already use, start with our guide to turning off Gmail's AI features.