There are plenty of warnings about online fraud. What was missing was a place to practise — calmly, without risk and without being embarrassed. That's what this site is.
Who is behind it
“Practice makes safe” is a non-profit offering by CARECOM® — Harald Mühlhoff, software architect and developer from Wetter (Ruhr), Germany. No account, no advertising, no tracking; nothing to buy.
What the exercises are based on
- Doing beats reading. In a classic study, people who played an anti-phishing game for 15 minutes recognised fake websites better than people who read a tutorial or existing training material (Sheng et al., 2007).
- Interactive, but no miracle. A large study with more than 19,500 employees found that common training formats offer limited value overall; those who completed an interactive exercise clicked on a later phishing email about 19 % less often — a relative effect that is small in absolute terms (Ho et al., 2025). That's why the exercises are short and hands-on, and every decision is explained straight away — and why we say clearly that practice alone is not enough.
- It fades — refreshing helps. Research on “inoculation” against manipulation shows that the effect decreases over time, game-based formats even faster, and that targeted refreshers help (Maertens et al., 2025). Hence the refreshers after a day, a week and a month.
What practice can't do
Nobody becomes immune through practice. Please also use technical protection: passkeys where offered — you sign in with your fingerprint or face, just like unlocking your phone, and they don't work on a fake site — otherwise two-step verification (a second step when you sign in, such as a code on your phone). Plus a password manager, updates and the golden rule of calling back on a number you already know.
House rules
- All companies in the exercises are invented and checked: no registered trademarks of the same name, no known company, addresses with endings reserved for examples.
- No real logos, no imitated websites of real companies, no copied scam messages.
- Every number and every factual claim has a source and a date.
- No promises: “safer”, never “safe”.
- No tracking, no cookies, no advertising, no affiliate links.
Why a carp?
Anglers know that carp that have been caught once become “hook-shy”. Researchers showed in 2020 that carp also learn caution by watching others being caught — although that effect wore off sooner (Lovén Wallerius et al., 2020). You don't have to get hooked to learn. And refreshing helps.
Contact
Found a mistake or have an idea for an exercise? Write to info@carecom.de.