Each year, the FBI updates its guide on avoiding common internet shopping scams during the holiday season. The included tips are excellent, but one sentence stands out from the rest: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Adopt that phrase as your mantra while navigating the fraud-riddled online shopping landscape this year, and you’ll avoid the most dangerous scammers on community auction and selling websites, such as Amazon, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Walmart.
Let’s examine how scammers operate on these platforms, followed by advice on how to spot shopping scams early.
New This Year: The Fake Seller Scam
In recent months, the particularly insidious “fake seller scam” has emerged. As the name implies, it involves criminals setting up phony storefronts on legitimate retail websites that allow third-party selling. Here’s how it works.
First, the scammer creates listings for popular brand-name products on a major retailer’s website. Next, they set the prices for their nonexistent products far lower than the market value. After that, the retailer’s algorithm boosts the fake listings because the prices are lower than those of the (presumably) legitimate products on the site. The scammers then generate fake, positive reviews on the site to make their phony product listing appear legitimate. A short time later, a buyer sees the product they want at a deeply discounted price, accompanied by plenty of positive reviews, and buys the fake product. Scammers may even go so far as to provide a fake delivery tracking number to the buyer.
The end result? The buyer fails to receive the product or gets a different or defective item from the seller. By the time the buyer realizes they’ve been duped, the listing for the product has disappeared.
I’ve been seeing a lot of complaints about fake sellers on marketplaces like eBay, Depop, Facebook Marketplace, Mercari, and Poshmark. These schemes work because it takes a while for the buyer to realize they’ve been fooled, giving the scammer plenty of time to disappear.
How to Spot Fake Seller Scams in Action
On Instagram, @loveless.vintage, a vintage T-shirt collector, offers a harsh but amusing view of “too good to be true” listings on shopping platforms:
In other words, definitely do unleash your inner skeptic while browsing listings on popular shopping platforms. Here are some questions to ask yourself before buying items from third-party sellers online:
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Is the Price Too Good to Be True?
The easiest way for most people to spot a potential scam is to do comparison shopping. If the item is listed for a price far below what other sellers are charging for the same product, you should be suspicious.
Why Is This a Limited-Time Listing?
On eBay’s website, the company warns that scammers set auctions for very short durations in an effort to close a deal fast: “The longer their listing is on eBay, the greater their chances of being caught, so be cautious when you see one-day listings.” The company notes that there are some exceptions, such as sellers offering tickets to upcoming concerts or other time-sensitive sales. However, in most cases, you should always question what might be motivating a seller to offer an item for a short duration.
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Is It a Real Brand?
Look at the “ships from/sold by” information in the product description. If the brand listed there doesn’t match the brand in the listing title, don’t buy it immediately. If you’re using Amazon, navigate to the seller’s profile page. Is there any information about the company? Does the seller’s name appear to be fake? Does the company name look like someone smashed the keyboard with their face? It’s probably a fake company.
Are the Reviews Legitimate?
On a seller’s About Page on Amazon, you can view feedback from other buyers. Look at how the feedback trends over time. Avoid sellers with mostly negative reviews, or those with a history that doesn’t extend back at least a year.
When it comes to avoiding fake product listings, carefully examine the reviews before making a purchase. I suggest reading a five-star review, a three-star review, and a one-star review, all for contrast. Fake listings may only have five-star reviews or reviews that clearly describe experiences with other products, rather than the specific product supposedly being reviewed.
Shop Smarter and Stay Safe
Shopping sites use algorithmic data to promote low-priced and popular products, but don’t appear to do any extensive vetting to ensure the products and sellers on their platforms are legitimate. It’s an ideal environment for scamming, with no immediate negative impact on the big retailer’s bottom line. It’s dangerous for customers, but we’re often the last consideration in these situations.
Stay safe by staying vigilant. Closely examine third-party listings on major retailer websites and don’t buy anything from a seller you know nothing about. Safely shopping online is more time-consuming these days, but you can avoid getting duped by learning about the products you’re buying and the people selling them.
About Our Expert
Kim Key
Senior Writer, Security
Experience
I review privacy tools like hardware security keys, password managers, private messaging apps, and ad-blocking software. I also report on online scams and offer advice to families and individuals about staying safe on the internet. Before joining PCMag, I wrote about tech and video games for CNN, Fanbyte, Mashable, The New York Times, and TechRadar. I also worked at CNN International, where I did field producing and reporting on sports that are popular with worldwide audiences.
In addition to the categories below, I exclusively cover ad blockers, authenticator apps, hardware security keys, and private messaging apps.
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