How to avoid scams selling stuff online
Most online-selling scams follow the same handful of scripts — overpayment, fake checks, and pressure to leave the platform. Here’s how to spot a fake buyer before you ship anything, sourced from the FTC, eBay, Meta, and the Better Business Bureau’s own scam-tracking research.
Last updated August 2026
What are the biggest red flags that a buyer is trying to scam you?
The FTC’s own seller guidance flags a few patterns that show up again and again: a buyer who wants to pay more than your asking price and have you refund the difference, anyone who pushes to move the conversation and payment off the marketplace app, a buyer who sends a check or money order for more than the sale price, and anyone who asks you to share a verification code that just landed in your texts or email. None of these are how a normal sale works — a real buyer pays the agreed price through the platform and picks up or ships the item. If a message matches any of these patterns, stop and don’t ship or hand anything over.
Why do sellers lose protection the moment a deal moves off the marketplace?
Because the platform’s buyer/seller protections only cover transactions completed on the platform. eBay’s own policy is explicit: offering to buy or sell outside eBay, or exchanging contact information before a sale completes, breaks the rules specifically because it exposes both sides to fraud and voids eBay’s protection programs if something goes wrong. The same logic applies on Facebook Marketplace and any other marketplace app — the escrow-like protections, dispute resolution, and payment records that make a platform safe to sell on only exist for sales that actually happen on that platform. A buyer who asks to “skip the fees” by paying you directly is asking you to give up the one thing that protects you if they don’t pay, or pay with something fake.
How does the overpayment / fake check scam actually work?
A buyer offers to pay more than your asking price, then asks you to wire, gift-card, or cash-app the difference back to them or a “shipper.” They send a check or money order for the inflated amount, and because it can take days for a bank to discover a check is fake, it looks like it cleared. You’ve already sent your refund and shipped the item by the time the check bounces, and the bank holds you responsible for the full amount. The FTC’s guidance for online sellers is direct on this: don’t accept a check for more than the selling price, and don’t send money to anyone you don’t know. If a payment method requires you to send money back before the transaction is done, that alone is the scam.
What payment methods are actually safe for local pickup sales?
For in-person, local sales (Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist-style meetups), the FTC’s advice is blunt: use cash. Payment apps like Venmo, Zelle, and Cash App aren’t built for commerce — they’re designed for paying people you already trust, transfers are effectively irreversible, and neither the app nor your bank will make you whole if the buyer disputes it afterward or the payment turns out to be fraudulent. Checks can be forged and take days to bounce. For online, ship-anywhere sales, use the marketplace’s own checkout (eBay’s, Facebook’s) rather than a payment app or wire transfer, so the sale stays inside the platform’s protection and dispute system instead of becoming a private transfer with no recourse.
How can you tell if a Facebook Marketplace buyer's profile itself is fake?
Meta’s official Marketplace safety guidance points sellers to the same checks before agreeing to meet or ship: look at how long the account has existed, whether it has a profile photo and normal activity history rather than being created days ago with nothing on it, and whether you have any mutual friends or overlapping local groups. Keep every conversation inside Facebook/Messenger rather than moving to text or a third-party app the moment someone asks — that request to leave the platform is itself one of the clearest signals something’s off, since it’s exactly how a scammer avoids leaving a record Facebook can act on if you report them.
How common are online marketplace scams, really?
Common enough to plan around, not so common that selling online isn’t worth it. The Better Business Bureau’s 2024 Scam Tracker Risk Report found online purchase scams made up 30.3% of all scams reported to BBB Scam Tracker that year, and 87.5% of people targeted by one reported losing money — though the report also found online purchase scams dropped to the 4th-riskiest category overall, behind investment, employment, and romance scams, as median dollar losses per incident are comparatively low. Separately, the FTC reported that U.S. consumers lost a record $12.5 billion to fraud of all kinds in 2024. The takeaway isn’t to avoid selling online — it’s that a small, consistent set of habits (checks clear before you ship, payment stays on-platform, no gift cards or wires to strangers) closes off the overwhelming majority of what actually goes wrong.
What's the fastest way to sell without exposing yourself to any of this?
Sell through a marketplace’s real checkout, under your own account, and never let the conversation leave the app. That’s also exactly how Reclaim works: it lists your item to eBay and Facebook Marketplace under your own accounts, so every sale still runs through eBay’s and Facebook’s actual payment and protection systems — Reclaim never touches your money or asks a buyer to pay it directly. Snap a photo, let the AI identify, price, and publish the listing, and the transaction itself stays exactly as protected as if you’d listed it yourself.
The short version
Never accept a check for more than your asking price, never send money back to a buyer, keep every conversation and payment inside the marketplace app, and treat any request to move off-platform as the red flag it is. For more on choosing the right place to list in the first place, see our eBay vs. Facebook Marketplace comparison and what sells best on Facebook Marketplace, or browse our full library of selling guides.
List it safely. List it in seconds.
Free to download. Highly rated on the App Store.