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freewheely_
not exactly to do with suspicious ads, and I suppose this could be very region-specific but has anyone noticed a huge increase in scam attempts in the last year or so? I live in Spain but also spend a lot of time in Portugal and I use OLX in Portugal and wallapop + milanuncios in Spain. All of these I'd say suffered a tenfold increase in scam attempts at least.
About this time last year I started getting messages immediately after publishing items (within seconds really) with a high value (+500€) trying to scam using common money transfer methods - usually only 1 or 2 per item. By now, it happens with everything, regardless of value, and several times - a PC I just posted for 400€ on wallapop.es got 11 scam messages within 5 minutes. There's a few templates but it's always the same 4 or 5 messages, word for word, from fake profiles that are months old and have reviews and everything. I've also made the mistake of checking the "make phone number visible" box in olx.pt and got the same thing but with phone calls which is pretty grim - real people, speaking with local accents and clearly in a rush to "close the deal". Some of these calls you can tell very clearly from the background noise are happening from call centres so it seems like this has become a professional business here.
It's also increasingly hard to sell stuff anyway in this economic climate so posting an ad these days feels like diving in a sea of bots and scammers. Is this happening in the UK too?