Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam
jeffreyladish.com
Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam
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Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam
#2I'm assuming there is a Stripe/other payment form behind the button, and not a login form for phishing. This seems like a lot of work for just phishing. It would seem amenable to actually taking payments because people are booking months in advance, giving you months of no complaints or chargebacks or fraud reports so the criminals can cash out.
Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam
#3This scams are very common and fairly easy to detected even without contacting the person.
I have been looking at apartments since november and finally found a place in January, and this is the third apartment I have rented in SF over the last 5 years. I believe this one would have been caught by point 2.
Detecting a SF craigslist rental scam:
1. Is it too good to be true? Its a scam. What's too good to be true you ask? Check other listings, especially on something like rentSFnow, or the many other property management company to get a baseline price range.
2. Reverse image search the images and if it comes from a house listing on redfin or some other website to buy/sell houses, its a scam.
3. Does it mention a management company? Check their website, if the apartment is not listed there, its a scam. If they don't have a website, its a scam. Does the building/apartment's google maps or yelp not link to the management company website? Its a scam.
4. Are the pictures really good/professional looking? It MAY be a scam.
5. Does the listing provide no/very little info about the apartment/roommates? Its a scam.
6. Look for listings for the same apartment on alternate sites like apartments.com/hotpad/zillow/trulia. Don't find another listing for the same place? Its a scam, with a minor chance that the owner may not be technically adept, in which case look at the pictures, if they are good, its a scam.
7. Are there multiple postings on the same day/close by with different titles but same content? Its a scam.
If it passes all of these, it may still be a scam, reach out and proceed with caution.
If after reaching out, they ask for deposit before seeing the place, its a scam. If they ask you to sign up on any website, it may be a scam. If the sign up requires credit card/bank account or sensitive personal info, its DEFINITELY A SCAM.
Ignore most things they tell you, the only thing you should care about is actually checking the place out and making sure it works for you in person.
Even if they let you see the place, IT MAY BE A SCAM. Proceed with caution and make sure the person actually own the place/has the right to rent the apartment.
Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam
#4There should be simple highlighter on the domain name in the browser so you can easily see:
airbnb.com.rooms-040349.town vs airbnb.com
Or some kind of script that can recognize likely b.s. for common domains. Now that I say it, it probably already exists.
Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam
#5This scams are very common and fairly easy to detected even without contacting the person. I have been looking at apartments since november and finally found a place in January, and this is the third apartment I have rented in SF over the last 5 years. I believe this one would have been caught by point 2. Detecting a SF craigslist rental scam: 1. Is it too good to be true? Its a scam. What's too good to be true you a…
All I need is one question:
On Craigslist? Probably a scam.
Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam
#6This scams are very common and fairly easy to detected even without contacting the person. I have been looking at apartments since november and finally found a place in January, and this is the third apartment I have rented in SF over the last 5 years. I believe this one would have been caught by point 2. Detecting a SF craigslist rental scam: 1. Is it too good to be true? Its a scam. What's too good to be true you a…
> Even if they let you see the place, IT MAY BE A SCAM. Proceed with caution and make sure the person actually own the place/has the right to rent the apartment.
This part was mind-blowing. I would never considered that someone would show an apartment they don't actually own.
Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam
#7This scams are very common and fairly easy to detected even without contacting the person. I have been looking at apartments since november and finally found a place in January, and this is the third apartment I have rented in SF over the last 5 years. I believe this one would have been caught by point 2. Detecting a SF craigslist rental scam: 1. Is it too good to be true? Its a scam. What's too good to be true you a…
All I need is one question: On Craigslist? Probably a scam.
Sure, if you don't care about the false positive rate of your prediction function.
Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam
#8This is the one downside of Let's Encrypt. They made running https scam sites cheap and easy. I still think having https everywhere is worth the trade off, but the downside should be acknowledged.
I wish there were an EV certificate like alternative for sites where actual money is involved (banking, hotels, etc) which cost a decent amount of money, so that at least the cost of running these scams would go up. For example, airbnb paying $1000 for one of these certificates would be a rounding error to them, but it would stop a lot of scam sites.
EDIT:
Right now the issue is the phishing protection is reactive in that we try to flag bad sites after the fact. I wish there was someway to make it proactive so that good sites could be attested to.
Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam
#9This is the one downside of Let's Encrypt. They made running https scam sites cheap and easy. I still think having https everywhere is worth the trade off, but the downside should be acknowledged. I wish there were an EV certificate like alternative for sites where actual money is involved (banking, hotels, etc) which cost a decent amount of money, so that at least the cost of running these scams would go up. For exa…
Hey, at least then your banking information will be known by the 'intended' scammer, not others that may be listening in the wire :)
Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam
#10This scams are very common and fairly easy to detected even without contacting the person. I have been looking at apartments since november and finally found a place in January, and this is the third apartment I have rented in SF over the last 5 years. I believe this one would have been caught by point 2. Detecting a SF craigslist rental scam: 1. Is it too good to be true? Its a scam. What's too good to be true you a…
> Even if they let you see the place, IT MAY BE A SCAM. Proceed with caution and make sure the person actually own the place/has the right to rent the apartment. This part was mind-blowing. I would never considered that someone would show an apartment they don't actually own.
Real estate is a very fragile system with all sorts of crazy scams. Deed fraud is a thing — people buy houses and incompetent banks write loans on houses that aren’t for sale.
There were a bunch of cases in Brooklyn a few years ago, some were related to corrupt officials in the Surrogate/Probate court and deceased persons property. Others were grifts affecting unoccupied properties. The system isn't really designed to stop these sorts of frauds.