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Five Tips To Help You Avoid Scams

Some good advice for our classifieds users, courtesy of Netcred.

NEVER send money via Western Union from someone you don't know personally.

Facilities such as Western Union are untraceable. They are designed to send money to people you know personally, such as family and friends. If you unwittingly send money to a scammer this way you'll never see it again and could be left with no money and no mandolin either.

Emails can be easily faked, are untraceable and generally don't require any form of ID to acquire.

Beware of name@yahoo.com, name@hotmail.com., etc. or other general free email addresses. They require no proof of identity to establish and should NOT be regarded as a valid identity without further assurance. Plenty of genuine people use these email providers as they're free but get more proof of who someone is than just an email address.

NEVER get involved with "overpayment" transactions.

If someone offers to pay more than your asking price and requests that you refund the difference to them or a third party seller, WALK AWAY FROM THE DEAL. This is the most common online scam and anything that smells vaguely of it should be avoided at all costs.

Checks never actually clear.

Even after funds have appeared in your account the money can be recalled years later if the check is stolen or fraudulent. This is the basis of the most common and most frequently successful scam. Often referred to as the "Overpayment" scam because the first request is for a "cleared" overpayment to be returned by Western Union (see above). If you are suckered into this the next request is for the return of all funds because of a change of heart or family disaster. Don't do it. You'll be repaying out of your own money and the fraudulent check will still be cancelled and the money removed from your account.

Read emails very carefully, often you can tell from their first email that someone is a scammer.

There are often many clues /giveaways in there. They will often misspell common English names and/or mistakenly put a surname as the Christian name or vice versa. Sometimes they get the item wrong eg. 'your motorbike' when you are selling a mandolin (or they don't mention the item by name at all). It is also common for a respondent to ask you for the 'Final Price' of your item - a sure sign that they are sending the same generic email to many people. Suspect any email that offers to buy an expensive item 'sight unseen'. Beware any email where the level of literacy/English/punctuation changes dramatically after the first response. In some places scammers can buy a generic first response but then have to do the rest themselves.

Help Adding Images to Ad

Need help adding an image to your ad? Check here.

Setting Default Home Page Tabs - added 1/5/2008

Like to have the tab of your choice open when you visit the Cafe home page? Just bookmark one of the custom links below and use that bookmark or set it as your home page. Viola! The links are as follows:

Happening Now... Cafe Home Page - added 1/5/08

You've probably noticed on the home page you can view the ten most recent Classifieds postings. By placing your cursor over a link but not clicking it (this is called a "mouse-over") you can get a snippet of the classified ad text entered by the ad owner. This same change has been made to the classifieds listings when you are browsing by category. You may want to make use of this capability to help judge whether you want to view the ad or not. An example is shown below:

Screen shot showing snippet

Your browser may display this information a little differently than the example shown here (Internet Explorer) but should be similar and will give you an idea of what to look for.

Using Full View vs. Headline View - added 12/30/07

Most users probably view ads first in "headline" view and then click on ads that interest them. In other words, you see just the headline. You can book also individual categories or all ads in "full view" which relieves you of the need for that tedious back and forth clicking. Example: if only Used Instruments is of interest to you, you probably start with this view which is a "headline" view. The same category in "full view" results in this view, which is only Used Instruments with images and detail. This link can be bookmarked and then revisted.

Links to individual categories in "full view" mode:

Replacing Photo Already Uploaded - added 12/30/07

This is a feature change. Some users would like to replace a photo once it has been uploaded with an ad. The screen shot below shows a link to help you start that process. Obviously, that link will not appear unless a photo has already been added. Also, only the ad owner can alter or replace the photo but will need the password they originally entered for the ad.

Screen shot (mock-up) showing link:

Screen shot showing change photo

Fraudulent Replies To Ads - added 12/30/07

A gentle reminder. This site receives at least one attack attempt per week from Nigeria in a typical scam designed to defraud you. The premise is they wish to purchase what you're selling and they want to send you a check far greater than the price you are asking (see anything wrong yet?) so their "shipping company" can handle the delivery. You are to refund money to them via Western Union. Of course the check will be phoney. That's the bad news. The good news is that there's never been a successful scam on their part on this site and 99% of the attempts are blocked by some programming on our back end.

You can protect yourself further by paying attention to all of that stuff at the bottom of your ad reply some of you tell us you've never read. Read on. And PLEASE, at least click the link below so you can see what kind of informaiton is being provided you with a reply to your ad.

Here's the text that appears at the bottom of a typical classifieds reply, and this one mocked-up to show you a link you don't want to receive in a reply:

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The following is automatically added by the Mandolin Cafe server to assist in dealing with potential online fraud. Please review this information carefully.

PROTECT YOURSELF FROM ONLINE FRAUD:
This link: http://whois.domaintools.com/41.204.224.21 shows where this reply to your ad originated from.
Report fraud: forward this email to eadg@mandolincafe.com with all contents intact.
Sent using: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)

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Click on the link above and you'll get a page that returns the following, shown below. You only need concern yourself with the location it provides which is highlighted in red. Nothing against Nigeria, but it's not exactly a hot spot for mandolins and in 13 years of running this site we've never heard of a valid user located there. All the other information you really don't need to concern yourself with. 99.9% of the time that information is going to tell you the user is using an AOL account or a local internet provider, and it doesn't always exactly match the location they provide.

WhoIs

Additional notes: some Nigerian internet access comes through Israel and that link might show that. Again, don't automatically assume someone is a criminal due to their location. It is possible for this information to be spoofed, but I've yet to see that on the classifieds. Pay attention: ads that are intentionally vague, contain no mandolin terms, users that immediately discuss unusual or complicated payment arrangements or show evidence of non-native English speaking. These are all details you should pay attention to, but by themself are not necessarily a guarantee someone is dishonest. NEVER communicate back with someone you hold in suspect, but forward to us as instructed. The best response for a criminal is no response at all.

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