Scams Over Facebook Marketplace?!
Scams over Facebook Marketplace have steadily been on the rise!
If you frequent Facebook Marketplace to look for great deals on used items, you may have noticed a rise in scams and scammers in recent years. According to the BBB there has been a roughly 60% increase in scams reported from users of the service since 2022. Notable scams to look out for include “Payment Confirmation” scams, where scammers have the buyer send confirmations of their transaction records to find private data on the buyer. “Overpayment” scams, where buyers will over send money, ask for a refund, and then cancel the original transaction. And especially “Pay in Advance” scams, where sellers have you pay to reserve a product that is not real in the first place.
While these sound scary, it is easy to mitigate risk and shop safely if you take a second look and use common sense when shopping on the platform. Watch out for deals that are “too good to be true”, and think what would the seller be getting out of this transaction. Do NOT ever send money without seeing the product or speaking with the other party. And most importantly, trust your gut. If anything feels out of the ordinary then stop the transaction and get it cleared up before continuing.
Now that the holiday season is upon us, use your best judgement and shop safely!
8 Comments
Catelynn Creiglow
Hello Josh,
It is really interesting to hear about the scams on Facebook. It could be especially common during the holiday season as people are trying to buy things for friends and family. Why do you think there has been such a big increase in scams on FB marketplace over the past three years?
jchane
I think the increase in FB Marketplace scams has been due to increased traffic of the site, as more people see it as a viable trading space, it becomes more susceptible to spam and scams, much like EBAY.
Sherry Malley
My grandma got scammed on Facebook Marketplace, this is a true threat to the community!
jchane
I am sorry to hear that! Hopefully you can point her to this website to teach her about online saftey!
Paige Y.
What a beautiful website! 🙂
I do have a question, does Facebook have any safety features to prevent this sort of thing? Or is it only reliant on consumers to prevent faulty transactions?
jchane
Yes! Facebook does have a way to report accounts that look suspicious, however it is on us to be the first line of defense!
Noah
This is very useful information to me because I love Facebook marketplace and use it frequently. I will use this as reference to look back to so thank you for the blog and free advice. Best of luck to you.
jchane
Sweet! I am glad I was able to teach you about safe online shopping!