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Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

jeffreyladish.com

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Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#121

Post by MisterTea »

14 wrote: post #96
michaelkeenan wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $4.5k will get you a 1 BR in the Bay Area Average one-bedroom rent in San Francisco is $3,520, and two bedrooms is $4,550. It's much cheaper elsewhere in the Bay Area. In Oakland, average one-bedroom rent is $2,470, and two bedrooms is $3,050. $4,300 is very plausible in Oakland. Source: https://www.zumper.com/blog/2020/02/zumper-national-rent-rep...

That is really mind blowing to me. I just looked at the local rental website for my small town and the first 2 bedroom duplex I looked at had a nice yard and looked good on the inside and was only $900/month. That is in Canadian dollars too I may add. That $4550 would be about $6000 Canadian and you would have people begging you to move in if you agreed to pay them a portion of that.The highest rental I see on the si…

It's all about the area. I have friends who moved to Chandler AZ and rented an entire single floor house with 2 car garage, 2br and in ground pool for $800 month. That was 5-6 years ago but way more affordable than the 1600+ in NYC for a 2br apartment.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#122

Post by blisterpeanuts »

Craigslist is the Wild West; use it at your own risk. A few years ago, I answered an enticing ad for a pretty nice apartment in a good school district near Boston. The price was about half what you would expect; that was the only tell.

They answered my inquiry right away and said something about being "away in Africa on mission work and need someone to sublet our place". I supposed this was somewhat plausible, but decided to test them.

Since they said they wanted someone quiet, I said, "We have a pet howler monkey. I hope that's okay."

They replied "That is fine." I then knew something was wrong, so I mentioned that he's not really house trained, and tends to throw things, and then they ghosted me.

Meanwhile, someone else might have fallen for the scam. I did report the ad, of course, but that takes a few hours or days and in the meantime, someone else might have been suckered. Craigslist could really benefit from some kind of comment/review system that would allow you to immediately call out these kinds of posts publicly. Of course it would also require a systematic way to take down revenge or mischief posts that unfairly attack legitimate sellers.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#123

Post by mwexler »

jameslk wrote: post #69

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 menti…

So, we often hear that "it's so easy to detect these scam listings" in ebay, amazon, air bnb, here, etc. (same for false reviews, etc.) But if it were so easy, why do companies not work harder to block them out? (I know, Craig's List is a bit of an outlier as a hands-off marketplace, but let's assume that they come under fire for these issues and are forced to make a statement)

Is it the liability issues (blocking content implies taking responsibility for the content instead of just being a middleman)? Is it fear of driving the scammers to make ever better listings? Is it that the costs to do this outweigh gains? Is that the tech would have too may false positives?

All of these 4 steps are technically automatible; what's stopping these companies from implementing them?

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#124

Post by Symbiote »

fphhotchips wrote: post #93
333c wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be saying this sarcastically, but in response to the comment you replied to, at least my browser (Firefox) does do this. On this page, "ycombinator.com" is highlighted in white.

I'm in Firefox right now, and it took me four looks to notice that. The contrast could definitely be higher.

I noticed it a while ago, but I think underline or maybe a different colour (blue?) would be much better.

(Are there any scripts that don't work at all with an underline? Bold not working for Chinese is a reason a bold domain isn't really an option.)

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#125

Post by Symbiote »

rmtech wrote: post #98
peteradio wrote: post #4

There 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.

Browsers should flag .com. It's pretty unbelievable that in 2020 your browser just les this through

Presumably you mean airbnb.𝗰𝗼𝗺.rooms-040349.town

But this only works for .com, whereas worldwide there are plenty of two-letter TLDs, which are often used as subdomains (e.g. dk.ebay.com and www.ebay.dk.).

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#126

Post by Symmetry »

mwexler wrote: post #123
jameslk wrote: post #69

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 menti…

So, we often hear that "it's so easy to detect these scam listings" in ebay, amazon, air bnb, here, etc. (same for false reviews, etc.) But if it were so easy, why do companies not work harder to block them out? (I know, Craig's List is a bit of an outlier as a hands-off marketplace, but let's assume that they come under fire for these issues and are forced to make a statement) Is it the liability issues (blocking co…

The acceptable false positive rate for you as a consumer is a lot higher than for the platform.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#127

Post by nradov »

bluGill wrote: post #119
uoaei wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And somehow, that's still the profitable option and not actually filling the apartment.

The problem is if they have some renters at the high price it is better to say they have tenants coming (even though they never arrive) than rent for cheaper and risk the old tenants find out the price is lower and they demand a reduced rate. Now add in a bank who is auditing your books: if you have some empty units "almost rented" that looks better than full units but you are not making enough on rent to pay the mor…

Banks don't conduct such audits.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#128

Post by heedlessly3 »

somehnguy wrote: post #48

The scammer almost immediately sending a bunch of photos of 'himself' is very interesting to me. I've noticed the same technique on dating apps. 9/10 times if the person you're talking to is not real they'll send a 'casual' looking photo after 3-4 back and forth messages, completely unsolicited. Like the author of this article it seems to be a misguided attempt to prove that they're real somehow and immediately gives…

Sending unsolicited photos of yourself is weird. But sending a link to your instagram or twitter. Of course, if the scammer had social media, then people would report them to get their accounts banned or there would be comments about being fake. Not to mention having 1 followers.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#129

Post by heedlessly3 »

roel_v wrote: post #54
cissou wrote: post #11

What I'm left wondering is: what is the payoff for these scams? These aren't easy to scale, as you need to be manually writing plausible looking, personalized emails, waiting for someone to take the bait, "nurture" them over days or weeks, etc. Also you need specific, valuable skills: between the social engineering, the actual engineering, the perfect grammar, the creativity, someone who can pull this off can definit…

Large parts of this can be automated (scraping profiles, setting up ads based on that scraped info, templates for responses etc), CRM system to track interactions, for which you have 'white collar' staff. The rest you farm out to call center style operations, the 'blue collar' work, who can also do things like 'customer support' for ransomware victims etc. There are entire villages in e.g. Eastern Europe that are not…

that's a lot of overhead and effort for a scam. It would be easier to just to have a normal job such as being a software developer.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#130

Post by bluGill »

nradov wrote: post #127
bluGill wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is if they have some renters at the high price it is better to say they have tenants coming (even though they never arrive) than rent for cheaper and risk the old tenants find out the price is lower and they demand a reduced rate. Now add in a bank who is auditing your books: if you have some empty units "almost rented" that looks better than full units but you are not making enough on rent to pay the mor…

Banks don't conduct such audits.

If the loan requires that all units be rented for $x they will do something to check.
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