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Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

jeffreyladish.com

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Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#81

Post by sgc »

nkurz wrote: post #22

The Craigslist ad is still up (or up again): https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/apa/d/berkeley-two-story-3b... The house appears to exist as pictured at the claimed address on Google maps. Oddly, although Jeffrey's emails about the place were from a couple weeks ago, this current ad says "Posted a day ago". It also says "Call Laurence", although as before there is no phone number. Personally, I'm still not completely s…

I was renting out a house in the greater bay area a few years ago. Someone copied the ad word for word, photo for photo, and posted it half price. I was alerted by a suspicious apartment seeker. I think searching CL or even just the web with snippets from the ad could help figure this out.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#82

Post by jimmaswell »

pmiller2 wrote: post #36
jimmaswell wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or sensitive personal info Shouldn't be confused with requiring SSN etc for a background and credit check which is standard now.

I don’t give my SSN to anyone I haven’t met, unless it’s a legitimate property management or background check site.

That's what I meant. It wouldn't be normal for a landlord to ask for the information over an email or something.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#83

Post by jimmaswell »

sokoloff wrote: post #55
pmiller2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t give my SSN to anyone I haven’t met, unless it’s a legitimate property management or background check site.

Are you saying that you’re protected from an SSN phish on an illegitimate site because you’re careful to only enter your SSN on legitimate sites? How do you know they’re legit?

Look around on google a bit to make sure it's a real rental agency and that the website is the same.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#84

Post by robbintt »

roel_v wrote: post #59
sjf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but if the photos obviously unprofessional, badly light and taken with a phone- it is definitely _not_ a scam. Similarly, no dogs/no cats- almost definitely _not_ a scam. Every scam listing I've seen has had pets OK.

Yeah that's the one that stuck out to me. An apartment as nice as the one described wouldn't allow pets, at least not if they're as experienced as they claimed to be here.

That’s not really accurate or else I would only get junk apartments. There’s usually a pet deposit, about 80% are no pets.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#85

Post by acangiano »

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.

1Password makes it very easy to spot these. If you click on the 1Password icon in your browser and you don't see your account, you're not on the official/right/real domain name.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#86

Post by pmiller2 »

sokoloff wrote: post #55
pmiller2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t give my SSN to anyone I haven’t met, unless it’s a legitimate property management or background check site.

Are you saying that you’re protected from an SSN phish on an illegitimate site because you’re careful to only enter your SSN on legitimate sites? How do you know they’re legit?

Same methods described in the article, plus a little googling.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#87

Post by jimmaswell »

nkozyra wrote: post #39
walrus01 wrote: post #23

The very first email from the "landlord" would tell me it was a scam. Maybe it's just because I've been doing things on the internet from before the web was a thing, but that's a pretty obvious scam. The whole "I'm working away from my usual home city on oil/mining/gas projects in (HARD TO REACH LOCATION)" thing is at least 20 years old now for scams.

Maybe. Real estate is weird, full of odd personalities, third parties, bizarre business practices. My first NYC apartment I left the broker feeling 90% sure I had been scammed. But all of the things that seemed weird to me were actually fairly normal and indeed I had the place. In big cities where rentals are big business, the unusual is pretty usual.

My first real job I got from a recruiter who reached out with an email of broken English and different fonts/colors. Turned out to be a huge legitimate company.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#88

Post by tialaramex »

nkozyra wrote: post #45
endorphone wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't a downside of L.E. though because HTTPS by itself was never meant to imply trust in the site, and any notions to that effect should rightly be dispelled. Sounds more like a benefit of LetsEncrypt if it brought more awareness to this. And FWIW the EV cert that sites like AirBNB buy cost in the range of $500. The cost isn't what makes it prohibitive, though, but instead it's the corporate and personal identi…

> but instead it's the corporate and personal identity that they (should) do as a part of the process. And often that isn't nearly as intensive as you might think.

It doesn't even matter. Tax havens like the United States of America or the United Kingdom go out of their way to make it easy for foreigners to create "corporations" with no local footprint, no ties back to anything and no practical way to investigate.

If you have $1000 and don't live there you can set up a bona fide US Corporation today and get an EV cert issued for it, within 24 hours. So long as you pick a unique name in the place where you register (any of 50 different US states) they don't need and won't ask for any further information - the paperwork will show up as "American" even if you can't point at the US on a map and have never even visited in your whole life. Congratulations, you are entitled to an EV certificate for, let's say, Okland Best Property Rentals Inc. a US company that older browsers show a proper American flag for and looks 100% legit but in fact proves nothing except that you filled out a web form and had a few hundred dollars.

If somebody tries to "send in the cops" to "Okland Best Property Rentals" expecting it's some crook who actually lives in California they'll be fighting a multi-billion dollar state-sponsored entity whose purpose is to help (non-US) crooks hide money, the agencies will stall and eventually, after a long and expensive fight, give up a PO box address in Abuja, Nigeria or something. There the trail ends. Bye.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#89

Post by alteria »

michaelkeenan wrote: post #72
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…

> $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...

I saw a 1 bedroom for $4,700 in the Peninsula recently, which explains why that complex has so many 1BR available.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#90

Post by rgj »

imglorp wrote: post #38
walrus01 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copying photos and the body text of a legitimate ad would certainly be a lot less time and effort on the part of a scammer than writing new custom scam ads every time.

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…

In Nigeria people tend to paint the text “not for sale” on their houses to avoid it being ‘sold’ by scammers.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/2003_hou...

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