Tech News

The 8 forms of scams on Facebook Marketplace, how to be careful

8 types of scams on Facebook Marketplace. (Image from ESET)

Facebook Marketplace is Meta’s e-commerce proposal, which over time has managed to attract more than a billion users around the world. And it is that using this platform is as easy as having a profile on the social network, because from there you can make purchases or put items for sale.

However, this site is not exempt from being used by cybercriminals to scam people, which is why ESET has shared with TechMarkup these 8 very common ways to be robbed on Facebook Marketplace.

damaged products

Sometimes products are published for sale that, based on their photographs, appear to be new and in perfect condition, but when the customer receives the purchase, he finds thate item is damaged, not what was offered or appears to have been used before. On the one hand it is possible that this is only due to a dishonest seller as it can also be a scam criminal.

fakes

Just as some Facebook Marketplace users have been surprised to receive damaged items, others have found counterfeits. For this reason, special attention should be paid to perfumes, jewelry, cosmetics and designer clothes, as these are the items that are most often replicated. Many people are on the hunt for discounts and good prices on the internet, but these types of products are rarely on sale.

Purchases that never arrive

This way of stealing from Facebook Marketplace is also very common, the criminals offer products for sale that are never sent to the buyer because they do not exist, but if they keep the money collected from the victim. This type of scam is more likely to occur when the alleged item is located outside of the potential customer’s local area.

Fake sweepstakes and prizes

This type of scam is just another case of phishing and it doesn’t exactly happen on Facebook Marketplace, but cybercriminals if they use the name of the platform to send links of supposed raffles of products or goods advertised on the Meta site.

In this way, they hope that the recipients of the messages open the supposed links of the prizes such as cryptocurrencies and luxury items, but that end up being the typical forms that are filled with personal data that will later be stolen to continue impersonating more people.

misleading advertising

It could be said that this it is a kind of dishonest strategy to attract buyersbecause very tempting promotions of expensive products are advertised, when a person is interested in the item, he is informed that the offer is no longer available and is offered a similar but much more expensive product or an element of a range and very different quality.

Seller scams

data theft

Although potential buyers are the ones most exposed to online scams, sellers are also at risk of being scammed, especially by Google Voice, which is a service that gives a phone number to make calls and send messages from cell phones or computers.

This type of theft consists of the criminal pretending to be a user who is quite interested in buying a product on offer, so he will try to start a conversation with the merchant and then continue it outside of Facebook Marketplace.

Usually They take the advertiser to Whatsapp, where they will send him a supposed code to verify that they are talking to a legitimate merchant, But it turns out that it is a two-step authentication to start a Google Voice account, once the person falls into the trap and shares the code, the criminals will impersonate the merchant to continue stealing from more people.

refunds

This move by scammers consists of impersonate a customer who accidentally deposited a sum of money greater than the value of a product, so they ask the seller to return the money they overpaid, sending them the supposed screenshot of the transaction as evidence. If the entrepreneur falls into the trap, he will have lost the amount of money that the thief requested.

Shipping insurance scams

In this case, entrepreneurs who sell very expensive products usually receive messages from criminals who impersonate buyers who are willing to pay the cost of shipping the itemand they prove it by sending the photo of the invoice of the apparent payment for the shipment, the theft is in that sellers are supposed to pay a charge for parcel insurance.

:

Related Articles

Back to top button