Rental Scam Red-Flag Highlighter

WHAT IT DOES

Rental Scam Red-Flag Highlighter scans rental listing pages for common scam indicators, helping you avoid fraudulent rental offers. The script detects warning signs including suspiciously low prices, requests for wire transfers or gift cards, "owner is overseas" language, lack of phone contact, generic descriptions, urgent pressure tactics, and other known scam patterns. Each detected red flag is highlighted with a colored underline and a tooltip explaining the warning, so you understand why something looks suspicious. A floating summary panel shows the total number of red flags found and an overall risk rating—Low, Medium, High, or Critical—giving you an instant assessment of the listing's trustworthiness. The tool helps educate users about common rental scams while providing practical, real-time protection.

WHERE IT RUNS

This script operates as a userscript within the BotGentz extension on any webpage containing rental listings, including Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Zillow, Apartments.com, Realtor.com, and other real estate sites. It functions on any modern browser that supports the BotGentz extension, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Opera. The script runs entirely client-side, scanning the page's text content without sending any information to external servers. It works across all domains and adapts to different site structures automatically.

HOW TO USE

After installation, the script automatically scans rental listing pages for red flags and highlights suspicious content. Hover over any highlighted text to see a detailed tooltip explaining the warning and why it's a scam indicator. The floating summary panel displays the total number of red flags and the overall risk rating. Open the panel to customize the risk threshold, add your own custom keywords for detection, toggle the summary panel, or enable/disable auto-scanning. Click "Scan Page Now" to manually trigger a new scan after the page content changes. Use the "✕" button on the summary panel to temporarily hide it for one hour.

THE MECHANISM THAT MAKES IT WORK

The script uses a comprehensive pattern-matching system built from real-world rental scam data. It maintains a database of scam indicator patterns organized by severity—Critical, High, Medium, and Low—based on how strongly each signal correlates with known scams. The scanning engine traverses all text nodes on the page using a DOM tree walker, checking each text segment against the pattern database without affecting the page layout. Matches are weighted by severity, and a risk rating algorithm calculates an overall score using weighted sums: Critical flags (wire transfers, gift card requests, deposits before viewing) contribute heavily, while lower-severity flags (generic descriptions, poor grammar) add smaller amounts. The resulting risk rating provides a clear, actionable assessment. Each highlighted element includes a hover tooltip generated from the pattern's stored explanation, educating users while warning them.

THE PANEL

The script panel is built using BotGentz's BGPanel framework and provides comprehensive control over the highlighter's behavior. The panel opens as a floating overlay that can be dragged anywhere on your screen, with a clean dark theme matching the tool's aesthetic. It includes a dropdown menu for risk threshold selection, a text input field for adding custom keywords, and toggle switches for enabling the highlighter, showing the summary panel, and auto-scanning on page load. Action buttons allow you to scan the page immediately, save settings, or reset all settings to defaults. The panel collapses to a small icon when not in use and expands when clicked, remaining accessible but unobtrusive. Press the Escape key at any time to close the panel.

PLEASE NOTE

This script requires the free BotGentz extension to be installed and activated in your browser. The extension is available from the official BotGentz website. The script is a detection aid, not a guarantee of safety. False positives may occur, and some legitimate listings may contain warning signs. Always verify rental listings independently by viewing the property in person, checking public records, and never sending money before verifying the landlord's identity. The script does not collect, store, or transmit any data; all processing occurs locally in your browser. You can add custom keywords to tailor the detection to specific scams prevalent in your area. If a site's structure changes significantly, the script may need updates to maintain compatibility.