Anti-Scam

Protect yourself against Internet fraud!

The vast majority of listings are posted by honest people and trust. So you can do excellent business. Despite this, it is important to follow a few common sense rules following to prevent any attempt to scam.

Our advices

• Doing business with people you can meet in person.
• Never send money by Western Union, MoneyGram or other anonymous payment systems.
• Never send money or products abroad.
• Do not accept checks.
• Ask about the person you're dealing with another confirming source name, address and telephone number.
• Keep copies of all correspondence (emails, listings, letters, etc.) and details of the person.
• If a deal seems too good to be true, there is every chance that this is the case. Refrain.

Recognize attempted scam

• The majority of scams have one or more of these characteristics:
• The person is abroad or traveling abroad.
• The person refuses to meet you in person.
• Payment is made through Western Union, Money Gram or check.
• The messages are in broken language (English or French or ...).
• The texts seem to be copied and pasted.
• The deal seems to be too good to be true.

The scammers:

Don’t ship or use paypal/credit card/electronic for payments – Increasingly related to the scams you’ll come across, never offer to ship items. Swap everything locally for Cash.

Don’t get your hopes up  – If a swap is imminent and there are allot of back and forth messages or texts – don’t pin the swap on this person. Be willing to walk away at any point if this person offers something unreasonable. Don’t ever compromise on items you’re swap for because of a story provided by a swapper.

 Common stories are having to pay for fixing an item, needing to pay for travel, a friend who says something that should make you sell cheaper. Many will want something for nothing, so be wary of this and don’t get your hopes up.

Here are eight common We-Swap.net scams that may occur and some tips to avoid falling for them.

1. Email or texting phishing scams. 

You may receive an email or text from a spoofed account that looks like it’s coming from We-Swap.net but is from a scammers. These messages may have a link to an outside source that encourages you to click. Once you do, it’ll ask you to log in, request a credit card payment or even verify your identity. But when you click on that link, it installs spyware on your computer or phone.

Usually, the con artist is scamming several people at once in the hopes that a few of them will click on the fraudulent link so they can steal your identity or take your information hostage through spyware. 

 Don’t

• Use your real email or phone number in your We-Swap.net ad.

• Respond to these messages.

• Click the link in the message.

• Give out your credit card number, social security number or any other identifying information that could be used to steal your identity.