My Gumtree Scammer Asked Me If I Sucked D**K Over WhatsApp
Gumtree seriously needs to up its security
Disclaimer: I am not responsible for the lowlife a**hole mentioned in this story.
Cybercriminals are everywhere. Pretending they aren’t is only hurting us. Where you find someone online trying to benefit themselves, you will also find a waiting room of predators, ready and waiting to exploit them.
I for one know what it’s like to almost fall prey to a scam, which I’m surprised Gumtree let slip through its filter. So here’s what happened.
My story
I’ve not picked up my guitar since 2019… so what did I do? Yes. I opened Gumtree. A straightforward way to upload a few pics, add a short description, and push out an ad without the listing and hefty final value fees like other platforms tend to do. Yes, I’m referring to eBay.
Within 20 minutes of my ad being live on the platform, I was greeted by a notification ping and a fresh WhatsApp message. Poor little me didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
Fantastic! A buyer wanted to snap up my £90 full-scale steel-string acoustic guitar and accessories bundle within minutes. I thought it was almost too good to be true.
Turns out it was.
The interested party tried (very poorly) to explain how they were going to try and scam me into willingly handing over my guitar for free. And do so after having wrapped it up in a pretty bow for them.
Basically, they would use this (fake) website: gumtree-payments.me with the name ‘Gumtree’ in the URL (so I think it’s legitimately associated with the platform). They even have the icon in the thumbnail, so it must be legit, right?
They would then claim they have generated a (fake) code presented in the link that would attempt to reassure me that they have paid.
Needless to say, my phone didn’t like me clicking through the link. It took me straight to a “Just a moment…” loading screen, then asked me to complete a CAPTCHA to prove I was human (so I obliged by clicking each image that contained a bicycle). After completing all of those checks, I was awarded a ‘Host Error’.
This continued to happen a few times until I gave up and checked back in with my scammer on WhatsApp.
The penny finally dropped when they said “Confirm and you will receive money after I pick up the package.”
Erm… how about no?
I should have seen this scam coming, really. The sender’s avatar tries to say “I’m honestly a real person”, but in reality says, “where the hell am I? I was chilling on my Instagram profile a minute ago!”
I really didn’t expect them to react the way they did once I called out their bulls**t!
Good thing I have a sense of humour.
My beef
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. My personal information was used for malicious activity. My trust in the platform’s security protocols has plummeted a fair amount.
The one thing eBay are a master of is user security. From listing to customer receipt, sellers are guaranteed that when purchased, their item(s) and relevant shipping and handling fees will be paid for — sometimes instantaneously. But as you can see from my personal experience, selling on Gumtree is an entirely different ball game.
I’m not going to pretend to know a lot about cyber attacks and security issues. I’m just a dissatisfied and mildly bewildered service user that has a beef to vent. So, I’m putting it out there, Gumtree: what can be done to up your security? I want to continue using your site and app but this experience has left a vile taste in my mouth.
If it’s mandatory for sellers to provide either a mobile phone number or email address within their adverts that can be accessed by anyone with a Gumtree account, then measures need to be put in place to stop them from being targeted by scammers.
In Gumtree’s defence, they have outlined the most common scams so that account holders remain aware. But if it’s commonplace for a platform to be targeted by scammers, then why not do something more to stop it than a ‘warning’ page that not everyone will be made aware of? It just runs the risk of becoming an open index of future scam victims.
That fake website again: gumtree-payments.me
Cooling down
I am peeved but equally grateful that this happened to me, otherwise, I would still be naive to their very blatant existence. More people need to be made aware of how easy a scam like this is to fall for. For those who aren’t as sceptical as I am, this could have easily happened to them.
I didn’t report the scammer but at least I’ve now done the next best thing and fed knowledge of their underhanded ways back into their playground.
I guess the lesson of this story is that in an age swelling toward a 4th industrial revolution that’s becoming harder to trust, only trust in one thing: how untrustworthy lurkers behind screens actually are.
And this is a message to all of those out there who attempt to make a living scamming unsuspecting and genuinely trusting sellers on Gumtree out of their possessions: you’re not that funny, and you’re not that smart.
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