Sarah tried to sell a dress online to fund a holiday. She lost $1000 in seconds

When Sarah decided to sell an old dress on Facebook Marketplace to fund a European holiday she had no idea it would leave her vulnerable to online scammers.

The 24-year-old created the online listing last week and was over the moon when various potential buyers began cropping up in her inbox.

Sarah told 7NEWS.com.au that in hindsight, one of the buyers seemed that “little bit too keen” and the transaction was “almost too easy”.

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“At first I thought this is great, I’m going to get a few hundred dollars for this dress I just had lying around,” she said.

“The exchange seemed really easy and straightforward at first.”

The buyer told Sarah that her daughter would be picking up the dress and that she would send money over to her via PayPal.

“Because PayPal has always seemed to me like such a secure platform, I didn’t really see any concern,” she said.

“We had already organised for her daughter to come over, so it all made sense to me.”

However, just moments later, Sarah would lose $1000 through a sophisticated online scam.

“I got an email from what I thought was PayPal saying that the money had been sent to my account, but that the account limit needed to be expanded.”

Sarah followed the prompts and not long after doing so, the buyer had blocked her and vanished. But the email was not from PayPal and Sarah gave away key information. to the hackers.

“I felt so stupid,” she said.

“I had always been warned about these types of things happening, but it all seemed so real.”

According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) there was a 47.9 per cent increase in reports of classified and online shopping scams via social media in 2022, compared to the previous year.

PayPal warns anyone who receives an email saying that they have received a payment through them to log into their PayPal account first to verify it.

“Remember not to follow email links,” the online payment system also says. “The safest way to access your account is always to open a browser window, navigate to PayPal.com, and enter your login info.

“If there’s a link in an email, always check it before you click. A link could look perfectly safe like www.paypal.com/SpecialOffers, but if you move your mouse over the link you’ll see the true destination.”

Advice

The ACCC recommends looking out for the following when purchasing goods on online platforms such as Facebook Marketplace:

• Watch out for websites or sellers advertising at very low prices, often lower than comparable or identical items on other websites.

• Be careful if the website or seller is very new. If possible, try and ascertain how many sales the seller has, and the period of time they’ve been selling. If the store is on social media, read the comments and search for independent reviews on the internet — noting that sometimes there may be fake positive reviews.

• Many people report losing money after communicating with the scammer over email to discuss a purchase on a digital marketplace. Always conduct your transaction through a secure platform.

• Always look for secure payment options such as PayPal or Apple/Google Pay rather than providing your credit card details to the seller. Scammers often ask you to pay by non-secure payment methods such as wire, bank or international funds transfers, money orders, pre-loaded gift cards, and cryptocurrency. It’s rare to recover money sent this way.

• If you believe your social media account has been compromised, change your password right away, use the ‘forgot my password’ option if you can’t log in, check for recent activity, notify your contacts and make sure your security software is up to date.

• Report scams to the ACCC via the Scamwatch report a scam page.