facebook marketplace, is your item the same as? 5 December 2021 at 1:51PM in Ebay, auctions, car boot sales, post & parcels 13 replies 2.4K views

challengedavid

this morning have listed a couple of £200 items, and i have had several messages along the lines of,  if your item the same as this?  then a link to the buyers item on ebay
not clicked anything but have blocked them all
whats it about?

soolin

challengedavid said:

this morning have listed a couple of £200 items, and i have had several messages along the lines of,  if your item the same as this?  then a link to the buyers item on ebay
not clicked anything but have blocked them all
whats it about?

There’s been a lot of talk about this on forums, it appears to be a scam of some sort but no one knows why or how. If you follow the link safely it merely takes you to a google search, so if for instance you are selling shoes it takes you to shoe retailers. A few people are saying it is a phish, but there is nothing to log in , no info to supply and so far no one who has followed a link has had any comeback.

it is all very strange. 

challengedavid

i had it a couple of years ago, pressed the link but it just took me there and nothing else

maybe its some kind of bot messaging who knows

will just block and move on i think

thanks for the reply

soolin

challengedavid said:

i had it a couple of years ago, pressed the link but it just took me there and nothing else

maybe its some kind of bot messaging who knows

will just block and move on i think

thanks for the reply

I am getting it on a lot of my items, I occasionally have 3 or 4 identical messages from different people when I check my messages. I’d love to know what the point of it is . 

One suggestion, and it did fit my scenario, was that it was supposed to be a link to a store where you could buy similar items - as a business , so you sell a Keyring and it links you to a Chinese store selling key rings that you might be tempted to buy. Certainly all of the messages I have had have been on new items, none have been received on second hand things (so far) 

kalsha

I have had 2 of those this morning.   Weird that both had used the exact same words.  With the first one, I did click on the link but it took me to google and all selling similar things.  With the second one, I realized straight away that the it was similar to first one.  Checked the profiles and both are in Arabic or similar language.

Dark_Star

Yes, me too & I don’t sell much on Facebook anyway. Two were definitely overseas Arabic type profiles. I just blocked them…utterly weird! Would be interested to find out what the point of it is….

theoretica

There is a lot on facebook which seems to me designed to get interaction - pointless trivial questions to answer that wouldn't even help guess your password.  If you respond does it give the other party the ability to send targeted advertising or anything?  Or better future access to your inbox?

kalsha

Not sure if I understand any of the above.

Spoonie_Turtle

kalsha said:

Not sure if I understand any of the above.

Spammer.  They were building their posts to be able to post links.

Bendy_House

That could be unfair.

 I have a number of items on FB Marketplace, and have received a few of these weird Q's. No idea what they hope to achieve, but very clearly not a genuine enquiry.

JustAnotherSaver

It's been quite some time since I sold anything online & looks like there's a different type of time waster compared to when I last used FB Marketplace.

I'm here basically to check I haven't unknowingly loaded some spyware or whatever to my phone.

So I listed an item, got a response fairly quickly, by the time I spotted it it was late so I was going to reply this morning.

Open it up & the guy says if it's like this (provides links) then he'll have it.

My first thought was you lazy idiot. I've basically given you the description with the make and model. My photos show clearly the condition & you can use the make and model to search what it can and can't do.

But I click the link anyway to see what he's on about. The link was nonsense.

The other 2 links are similar to that. Just nonsense.

Lesson learned but as I've now clicked the link - chances I've done something (harmful) to my phone?