The Facebook scammers remain frisky, so here’s your irregularly scheduled reminder to listen to your spidey sense. Stay sexy and don’t get defrauded!

We are selling a refrigerator, and to my chagrin, the first four replies have all been scam attempts. One in particular tried something just weird enough that I’d like to share it here — so without further ado, here’s my latest interaction with Marketplace scammers!

Why the polls?

“Anja Faust” was the first to respond. I accepted her offer, and she started asking questions in the form of a poll, which seemed a little weird — but I thought maybe that’s just what the kids do these days.

I was willing to consider direct phone contact at first because it’s a pain to text ad infinitum, but in retrospect, that was silly of me, because the next poll I got was clearly suspicious:

This simply doesn’t pass the sniff test: sending me a confirmation code of any type doesn’t do jack to validate that I’m a safe seller. I then got two Google Voice confirmation codes, which also told me explicitly “don’t share this code with anyone,” so it was pretty obvious that something was rotten here.

What’s your endgame?

I told “Anja” that I wasn’t going to play along:

Immediately, she disappeared into the ether like a ghost at sunrise. But I was curious what the objective of this scam actually is, and a quick Google told me everything I needed to know:

As scams go, this is fairly low-octane — it sounds like they’re mostly just trying to get new numbers for scamming after their old numbers have been burned. However, it’s never good to get your personal info tangled up with a fraudster if you can help it. If you or someone you know has accidentally fallen victim to this scam, this post also has good suggestions on what to do to make sure your number stays secure.

Staying safe in the Marketplace

As a reminder, best practices for safety as an online seller or buyer include:

• Meet in a bright and populated public place, if possible/practical.
• Plan a porch/driveway pickup if necessary (rather than letting a stranger in your house).
• Ensure you are not alone if a home pickup or dropoff is happening — even if this means asking a neighbor to pop outside to say hi while you interact with the buyer/seller, or bringing a friend as a ride-along.
• Keep all the communications inside Messenger instead of switching to a different communication channel (all 4 of the scammers who contacted me today tried to get me to switch to a different way of communicating!).
• Don’t provide payment before you retrieve your purchase, and be suspicious of anyone offering to pay you too early.
• Stick to secure electronic payment methods if possible. Cash presents more physical risk and no paper trail, direct bank transfers leave your account information vulnerable, and scammers love gift cards, so someone asking to be paid in gift cards is usually a bad sign.

It’s also worth vetting the profile of any offers you’re getting; all 4 scammers had profiles that were created in 2023 with no other activity associated with their profile, and one didn’t even have a profile picture. Real people tend to leave at least some breadcrumbs behind them as they go about their online lives. And although the “sending all questions as polls” thing doesn’t appear to be materially associated with fraud activity, it’s a weird and inefficient way to communicate, and it set my spidey senses a-tingle.

As I’ve said before, you have my blessing to tell any fraudster “My friend was a fraud investigator and she’s seen this before/she told me this was a bad idea/she says you can get bent.” Feel free to improvise; whatever gets the point across! You can block the scammers, and consider reporting them (even if we’re not sure it’s actually doing anything).

If you fell for this specific scam, this post has good suggestions on what to do. As an extra safety measure, consider following the steps I outline here on what to do if you’re notified that your identity/account is compromised — every day is a good day to freeze your credit file (which is totally free and provides outstanding fraud protection).

If you have any questions — or a favorite scam red flag that you’d like to share — drop a comment or shoot me an email at hi@fortunamoney.com. And if you’ve been a victim and you want help navigating your next steps, I’ll be happy to help you create a plan. Cheers!