Where to report what you find, the free tools we use, and who else is doing this work. We aren’t affiliated with any of them.
In Canada
- Report Cyber and Fraud: the federal reporting system run by the RCMP and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. If you’ve lost money, report here and to your local police.
- Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre: alerts, guidance and the national picture of what Canadians are reporting.
- Competition Bureau Canada: enforces the Competition Act, including false or misleading claims, fake reviews and misused testimonials.
- Ad Standards: Canada’s advertising self-regulator. Takes consumer complaints about specific ads.
In the US
- FTC ReportFraud: the Federal Trade Commission’s complaint system for consumers.
- FTC guidance on endorsements and reviews: what US law expects of testimonials, influencer posts and online reviews.
On the platforms
Every major platform has a report option on profiles, posts and ads, usually behind a three-dot menu. Report the account itself, not only the comment.
- Meta threat reporting: Meta’s published reports on coordinated inauthentic behaviour it has removed.
Free tools
- Google Lens and TinEye: reverse image search. Where else does this photo appear?
- Internet Archive Wayback Machine: old versions of web pages. Also lets you save a page as it is today.
- ICANN Lookup: when a domain was registered and through whom.
- InVID-WeVerify plugin: a browser extension for checking images and video, used by newsrooms.
Further reading
- Bellingcat’s Online Investigations Toolkit: a large, maintained catalogue of open-source research tools.
- Digital Forensic Research Lab: the Atlantic Council’s research on disinformation and inauthentic networks.