A scam detection system includes a user computer that runs a security application and a backend system that runs a scam detector. An email is received at the user computer. The security application extracts and forwards a content of the email, which includes a body of the email, to the backend system. The email body of the email is anonymized by removing personally identifiable information from the email body. A hash of the anonymized email body is generated and compared against hashes of a whitelist and a blacklist. The anonymized email body is classified. A segment of text of the anonymized email body is identified and provided to the user computer when the anonymized email body is classified as scam.