S*m watch: Car history checks

The first in a series of “heads up” articles about things that I see in real life that you need to be aware of.

The first word might be “scam”, “scum”, or “spam”. You decide…

This one goes to selling your own used car. Believe it or not but not everyone on Facebook Marketplace is a real person.

My partner listed a car and **almost immediately **got contacted. I warned him that AI and robots and scam farms are getting more sophisticated but the desire to do a deal is often overwhelming.

Well the story is that the buyer offers to come by to check out the car, promises to bring cash on the spot, doesn’t challenge the price (red flag!) on the condition that we pay for a car history check on a site via a link they provided.

So… classic phishing attempt. The website is on a surface level seeming reasonable and complete with content, but does have some red flags (old copyright date, no contact details, credit card logos missing, no option for secure payment methods like Apple Pay).

We offered to provide our own government sourced car information but that wasn’t good enough for our buyer.

Eventually after we’d put up a fight, the buyer disappeared.

This case has happened to others, apparently widespread according to Reddit.

🤔