Review & community guidelines

Effective October 17, 2026

fraud.ca works best when reviews are honest, first-hand and fair — to the people reading them and to the businesses being reviewed. These guidelines apply to everything posted on fraud.ca. They form part of our Terms of use.

1. Our principles

• Honest, first-hand experience. Reviews should come from people who dealt with the business.
• Fair to everyone. Negative experiences are welcome. So are positive ones.
• No pay to remove. No business can pay to remove, hide or change a genuine review. Businesses can respond publicly.
• Transparent rules. Our moderation — human and automated — is based on these guidelines.

2. Writing a review

• Write about your own experience as a customer, client, tenant, applicant or other person who dealt directly with the business. Don’t review based on what someone else told you or what you read online.
• One review per business. In most cases you can edit it later — for example if the business fixes the problem.
• Be specific. Dates, amounts, what you were promised and what you received are the most useful details for other people.
• Keep it relevant to the business and its products or services.
• Ratings reflect your experience. Choose the star rating that honestly matches what happened.

3. Describe what happened — don't convict

fraud.ca exists to help people avoid bad experiences, so serious problems belong here. But only a court can decide that someone committed a crime. When something went wrong:

• Describe the facts: “I paid a $2,000 deposit on May 3. The work was never done, and they haven’t answered my calls since June.”
• Share how you felt and your opinion, clearly as an opinion: “I felt misled.” “I wouldn’t hire them again.”
• Don’t state as fact that a business or person is a criminal — for example “they’re scammers”, “this is fraud” or “he stole my money” — unless they’ve been convicted. Our moderation may ask you to rephrase.

If you’ve lost money to fraud, report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and your local police too.

4. Not allowed

• Fake or conflicted reviews: reviewing your own business, your employer, a relative’s business or a competitor; reviews written for payment, discounts, gifts or other rewards; reviews written on someone else’s behalf.
• Personal information: home addresses, personal phone numbers, emails, licence plates, ID numbers, or full names of individual employees combined with accusations. First names or roles (“the manager”) are fine.
• Hate, harassment and threats: content attacking people for who they are, insults aimed at individuals, threats of violence or harm.
• Spam and advertising: promotions, referral codes, links to other businesses, or unrelated content.
• Off-topic content: political or personal disputes unrelated to the business’s products or services.
• Illegal content: anything that breaks the law or encourages others to.
• Manipulation: using multiple accounts, coordinating reviews, or abusing votes or reports.

5. Discussions

Discussions are for questions, tips and conversation about a business and its products. The same rules apply. Discussion posts don’t affect a business’s rating. Be constructive, and don’t use discussions to post a review in disguise.

6. Businesses and their reviews

Businesses can respond to reviews publicly once they’ve claimed their page. Responses must be professional, must not reveal a customer’s personal information, and must follow these guidelines.

Businesses must not offer incentives for reviews, ask only happy customers to review them (“review gating”), post reviews of themselves or competitors, or pressure anyone to change or remove a review. We may note attempts to manipulate reviews on the business’s page.

We don’t remove a review because a business disagrees with it. If a business believes a review breaks these guidelines, it can report it; if it believes a review is unlawful, it can send a legal notice as described in our Terms of use.

7. How moderation works

Every review and post is checked before it appears:

1. Automatic rules check for things like links and email addresses, and apply posting limits.
2. An AI model checks the text using rules based on these guidelines and decides whether to publish it, return it to you with specific suggestions, reject it, or hold it for a person.
3. A human moderator handles content the automatic checks hold for review, appeals, and reports those checks can’t settle.

The AI receives the content being checked, basic information about the business and related context, such as the post it replies to or a report — we don’t send it your account email address. We keep records of moderation decisions. Publishing content is not a finding that it’s true.

8. Reporting content

If you see a review, post or business page that breaks these guidelines, use the Report button on it (you’ll need to be signed in). To fix a business’s phone, address, website or hours, use Suggest an edit instead.

What happens next:

• Reviews and posts may be checked again against these guidelines, with your report as context. Clear violations may be taken down or sent back to the author to fix, and the author can see the outcome on their account page. Content isn’t taken down just because someone disagrees with it.
• Reports a check can’t settle from the text — for example that a reviewer was never a customer, or works for a competitor — are generally passed to a person, as are reports on business pages.
• Reporters build a track record. Reports that moderators repeatedly find unfounded count for less, which makes it harder to use reports to bury fair reviews.

You can follow the outcome of your recent reports on your account page. You can also email reportabuse@fraud.ca.

For legal complaints (for example defamation or copyright), email legal@fraud.ca as described in our Terms of use.

9. Appeals

If your content was returned, rejected or removed and you think we got it wrong — including any decision made by automated means — email support@fraud.ca. A person will review the decision.

10. Enforcement

Depending on how serious a problem is, we may return content for changes, remove it, restrict an account’s ability to post, or close the account. We may also act on content that’s technically within these rules but is clearly being used to mislead or harm.

We may update these guidelines from time to time, as described in our Terms of use.