Customers receiving fraudulant emails

[belvedere +]

Hi,

Last week many of the customers on my classifieds website were sent an email by somebody claiming to be interested in their item for sale. If the customer responded the item was still for sale the interested buyer would then say they wanted to purchase the item and would ask for their Paypal email address so as to make the payment. To cut a long story short one of our customers fell into the trap and ended up paying out 1200�, supposedly to a transport company to have his car shipped. He now wants to hold me responsable because he's been scammed through my website.I have since reported the issue to Paypal and Google, as the offending email came from a Gmail address. I have also sent all registered users and email warning them about the scam but unfortunately for one person it was too late.

Has anybody had this experience before and if so how did you handle it?

Can anything be done about it to avoid it happening again?

Is there a way of sending myself a Blind Copy of all email enquiries sent to customers so that I can warn clients if I find it suspicious?

Many thanks
Mike

[Mike-N-Tosh +]

This is one of the oldest scams in the books. I don't know if you list terms for your site or not, but you should. Typically at least in the US, you can not be held liable. If you have definitive terms stating, the fact that all transactions for items are between the buyer and seller, etc.. then that helps your standpoint even more. this is standard for all classified sites, auction sites, etc. where the site is just a venue. Obviously, you didn't send the email to them or ask them to send money, etc., etc.

It's also a good idea to have an FAQ or other page warning users about scams and advice about verifying both entities, the buyer and the seller and/or links to regulatory agencies to be able to report incidents, scams, bogus emails and such.

[seymourjames +]

You can modify the contact.php file so that it sends you a copy of the email. I do this on this site - property in france because I get paid per lead generated - its a single advertiser site.

Here is what I do - I replace $to=$rs['email']; in contact.php with

$to=$rs['email'] .',[email protected]';

If you wanted to blind copy it then you would need to do more modification to the script. However if you do that , it would be wise to make sure it is clear in your terms and conditions that you are doing it. There are privacy issues in most places.

[belvedere +]

Originally Posted by Mike-N-Tosh

This is one of the oldest scams in the books. I don't know if you list terms for your site or not, but you should. Typically at least in the US, you can not be held liable. If you have definitive terms stating, the fact that all transactions for items are between the buyer and seller, etc.. then that helps your standpoint even more. this is standard for all classified sites, auction sites, etc. where the site is just a venue. Obviously, you didn't send the email to them or ask them to send money, etc., etc.

It's also a good idea to have an FAQ or other page warning users about scams and advice about verifying both entities, the buyer and the seller and/or links to regulatory agencies to be able to report incidents, scams, bogus emails and such.

Thanks Mike. I do have a Terms and Conditions which specifies we are not responsable for transactions between buyers and sellers, so I can't be held responsable. However I would like to report this fraud to somebody who could investigate it further. Basically just to help the victim of my website.

Thanks

[belvedere +]

Originally Posted by seymourjames

You can modify the contact.php file so that it sends you a copy of the email. I do this on this site - property in france because I get paid per lead generated - its a single advertiser site.

Here is what I do - I replace $to=$rs['email']; in contact.php with

$to=$rs['email'] .',[email protected]';

If you wanted to blind copy it then you would need to do more modification to the script. However if you do that , it would be wise to make sure it is clear in your terms and conditions that you are doing it. There are privacy issues in most places.

Thanks, however I gues I need the developer version then. I only have the designer version.