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Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

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Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#61

Post by tartoran »

Scoundreller wrote: post #42
imglorp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy, story time. I encountered the opposite scam. I was selling a house myself. I took photos, paid to have it listed, posted a sign out front, and posted ads in various places including CL. Someone contacted me to say they responded to an ad on CL for a rental house. The prospective renter was told by the scammer he was out of town and that they could go to the house and look around the property. He would transac…

VoIP can be “backtracked”. Takes a bit of effort, but the DOJ got providers to do it for the fake IRS/SSA/INS calls. There’s a standardized process for it. Might lead to a deader-end, but “it’s VoIP so we can’t do anything” is a cop-out.

More should be done to standardize VOIP tracking. It's a huge problem and this method is widely used for scams.

I don't know if caller id spoofing can be prevented though. I get on average 10 scam calls daily, some days more. My phone is on vibrate and am using this as a way to relax instead of geting upset. I stand up from my desk and take a walk around the office. It mostly doesn't bother me but sometimes when it catches me at the wrong time it does get to me and Id rather this stopped. Sure, my phone does give me the 'Scam likely' but I wouldn't pick up from phone numbers that are not in my address book anyway. And I if phone vibrates I check after I finish what I currently doing so it could always wait.

What bothers me is the ease with witch someone on the other side of the planet can do this. This thought only bothers me...

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#64

Post by Scoundreller »

tartoran wrote: post #61
Scoundreller wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VoIP can be “backtracked”. Takes a bit of effort, but the DOJ got providers to do it for the fake IRS/SSA/INS calls. There’s a standardized process for it. Might lead to a deader-end, but “it’s VoIP so we can’t do anything” is a cop-out.

More should be done to standardize VOIP tracking. It's a huge problem and this method is widely used for scams. I don't know if caller id spoofing can be prevented though. I get on average 10 scam calls daily, some days more. My phone is on vibrate and am using this as a way to relax instead of geting upset. I stand up from my desk and take a walk around the office. It mostly doesn't bother me but sometimes when it c…

Neighbourhood spoofing is definitely a problem because I have on-call and it means it could be a known or unknown colleague (big org).

Then there’s the time the scammers called every number sequentially (or simultaneously?) in a number block, jamming the incoming/outgoing lines because we have an exchange code block, but only a reasonable number of lines.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#65

Post by ericd »

sjf wrote: post #49

It makes me deeply depressed that real estate is huge right now, many more people than ever are renting and we still have to deal with Craiglist scams to find a place to live. Ignoring the fact that the last ten years of UX seems to have passed Craiglist by, it's unbelievable that such a huge site has the absolute minimum of fraud prevention. There are so many comments on here about various kinds of CL scams, why doe…

With these sorts of marketplaces, the major challenge is trying to get small landlords to list. Of course the sites want their listings to be legitimate, though, so there's a tension between making it easy for posters and getting enough information and verification to be able to detect and weed out scammers.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#66

Post by ericd »

unishark wrote: post #52
sjf wrote: post #49

It makes me deeply depressed that real estate is huge right now, many more people than ever are renting and we still have to deal with Craiglist scams to find a place to live. Ignoring the fact that the last ten years of UX seems to have passed Craiglist by, it's unbelievable that such a huge site has the absolute minimum of fraud prevention. There are so many comments on here about various kinds of CL scams, why doe…

You'd think they have the world's biggest dataset of scam posts too, with people constantly labeling posts for them (including law enforcement).

The problem is that scam posts are frequently just copied legitimate posts. The only thing we found that worked was to force communication to go through a messaging proxy to run classifiers on those messages.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#67

Post by mdani »

In the reply, I'd probably include 1x1 pixel hidden tracker image or maybe a legit looking logo below signature and get the client ip of the scammer's computer when it does http GET on it. The ip can tell more about where they're located.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#68

Post by craze3 »

mdani wrote: post #67

In the reply, I'd probably include 1x1 pixel hidden tracker image or maybe a legit looking logo below signature and get the client ip of the scammer's computer when it does http GET on it. The ip can tell more about where they're located.

This is a great idea, but if he's gone through all this trouble already, then he's probably behind a proxy or VPN...

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#69

Post by jameslk »

From the screenshot, the scam is actually pretty easy to spot if you know what to look for. Here's some clues:

1. All accomodations are available (w/d in unit, pets ok, wheelchair accessible, furnished!) - eliminating listings with all of these checked will nearly eliminate the scam listings.

2. The description doesn't include any information about who's the renter. Usually the landlord or property manager will mention something about themselves.

3. Professional photos. This in itself is not a giveaway, but given the above two clues, almost always indicates the photos were taken from another listing. A reverse image search can confirm.

4. The deal is too good to be true. Know the market. $4.5k may not be enough to get you a furnished luxury 3BR single family home in the Bay Area.

I've had to browse through a lot of CL listings in the Bay Area and these are the nearly guaranteed ways I've found to eliminate the scam listings.

If that's not enough, I start my emails with requesting times of showings. If someone isn't willing to commit to meeting and showing me the place, I won't go any further.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#70

Post by nkurz »

randycupertino wrote: post #63

Same scam (and probably same scammer? - same backstory) posted on reddit a few months ago a few towns over: https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/czfr3m/warning_cle...

And deep within that thread are links to a couple other scams by the same person for an NYC apartment and a car for sale. What would need to change so that serial scammers like this are arrested rather than allowed to continue preying on people?
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