Facebook Marketplace Scam Response

Facebook Marketplace is a common place for scammers to lurk and harvest your personal information. Scammers try to trick you into wiring them money, sending them Zelle or Venmo payments, or clicking phishing links to fake websites that collect for your Zelle, Venmo, or Banking Details. If it's a stressful time (like moving) or a high quality scam (AI is making this easier), even the most careful person can fall for it.

Our team is here with advice and post-scam clean up help. If you're dealing with an urgent situation, let us know.

Protecting Your Emails

Set up a new free gmail dedicated to that account like [email protected]. Or if you don't want to create an email for every account, you can set up a catchall like [email protected]. This will make it easy for you to rotate it in the future in case there are further leaks or breaches - and it is also easy to remember unlike Apple's hide my email feature. If it’s a pain to log into several accounts, set up an email forwarding rule in this new email in less than 5 minutes. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10957?hl=en

Unfortunately, if a hacker has your primary email, they may try to bruteforce access or set up accounts in your name. This is also known as email bombing. You might retire that email all together. Yes, it’s a pain, but it can be the best solution if a particularly malicious group decides to target this email.

Protecting Your Phone Numbers

This is similar to the email suggestions. You can set up a free alias phone number using google voice. Phone numbers are harder to remember, but can be very useful to prevent spammers and hackers from bothering you. Once you have a second number, start sharing it with any non-trusted people asking for your number: rewards programs, restaurants, contractors, sales people, recruiters etc. Then if that number gets bombarded, it’s no issue to switch.

For any compromised number you've shared with a scammer, if you haven’t yet set up a PIN with your wireless provider, call them as soon as possible and set that up. It will prevent a sim swap; someone taking over your mobile account and stealing access to that number. Sim swapping is how hackers bypass 2 factor authentication or phish people from your phone number.

Protecting Your Facebook Account

If you fall for a scam or phish, your Facebook profile is now likely flagged as one that can be taken over easily. This scammer could post your information on a darkweb forum as an easy target, then they'd access your password through a breach or via bruteforce. If you are targeted with a scam and accidentally engage, reset your password to something strong & unique - strong passwords take years to crack, weak passwords take days to bruteforce. And set 2 factor authentication too. 

Hackers often hijack Facebook accounts to phish or scam other people - they do this because generating a believable Facebook profile is quite hard (we’ve tried and they very quickly get banned if the photo + email + friend network + ip address looks at all like a bot). So it’s easier to steal one than make one.

You can check to see if any of the larger password breaches include your password using this breach tool built by Cybersecurity research Troy Hunt: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

If your current email / password shows up as breached or pwned, switch it right away, and consider switching your email for that account as well.

Cleaning Up Post-Breach

Read our product FAQ for more details on Kanary and our ‘How It Works’ page for guidance on removal timelines. Try it for yourself. Free removals included! Start the 14-day trial.