7 pointers on marketplace scams rules that hold up

A rule is a decision you make once, when nothing is at stake, so that you do not have to make it again while somebody is waiting for an answer.

That is the whole argument for having any. Judgment is worse under time pressure, worse when money has already been discussed, and worse when you have spent an hour being agreeable. A rule made on a quiet Tuesday is not smarter than you are. It is just made by a version of you who was not being hurried.

What to take away

• The point of a rule is that it removes the decision, not that it makes you suspicious.
• A rule you would break for a good enough reason is not a rule. Write it so there is no reason.
• Rules about payment method and about codes do most of the work. Everything else is refinement.

What makes a rule usable

Three properties separate a rule that survives contact with a real deal from one that reads well and gets abandoned.

It has to be checkable without judgment. "Do not deal with suspicious people" is not a rule, because deciding whether somebody is suspicious is exactly the thing you cannot do reliably in the moment. "No bank transfers to anyone I have not met" is a rule, because you can answer it in one second.

It has to be stated as a refusal, not a preference. Preferences bend. "I prefer to pay through the platform" ends with you paying a stranger directly because they explained why they cannot use it.

And it has to cost something you can live with. A rule so strict you will break it the first time it is inconvenient trains you to treat rules as suggestions.

The money rules

These are the ones worth writing down first, because payment method decides whether anything else you do matters.

• No gift card codes to anybody, for any reason, ever. There is no legitimate transaction of this shape.
• No cryptocurrency to a private party in a marketplace deal.
• No instant bank transfer to a person I have not met and cannot find again.
• No deposit on anything I have not seen, including rentals, vehicles, and tickets.
• No refund sent to an account other than the one the payment came from.
• Above a figure I set in advance, the deal happens in person or through the platform's own protected checkout, and nowhere else.

That last one is worth setting properly. Pick the number where losing it would actually hurt, and treat everything above it as a different category of transaction. The table of what each payment method leaves you if a deal fails is in marketplace scams.

The code and account rules

One rule here matters more than the rest combined: a verification code that arrives on your phone never gets read out to anyone. Not to prove you are real, not to confirm a badge, not to release a payment. Codes exist to prove you are you to a service, and they prove nothing to another person. The mechanics of why that request is always an attack are covered in phishing scams rules 2027.

Two more that sit alongside it. Nothing gets installed, enabled, or granted access so that a deal can proceed. And no account of yours gets "verified", "upgraded", or "activated" as a condition of receiving money you are owed, because money you are owed never requires you to release it yourself.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's guidance on multi-factor authentication is a reasonable place to see why the code is worth this much protection.

The information rules

A marketplace deal needs very little about you, and the gap between what it needs and what people hand over is where the slower losses come from.

No identity document goes to a private party. No home address before a deal is agreed, and often not then. No phone number where the platform's own messaging will do, because a number is a lever for account recovery long after the item is sold. Nothing about your work, your schedule, or who else lives with you.

If you are selling from home and a collection is unavoidable, the address is the one thing you cannot avoid sharing, which is why the safety rules around meeting matter more in that case than any of the above.

The rules that are about you, not them

Two habits do more than any check.

Sleep on anything above your threshold. A deal that cannot survive one night was never a deal, and urgency is the only tool that works on people who are otherwise careful.

Tell one other person before money moves. Not for permission. Saying a plan out loud to somebody who is not invested in it is the cheapest error-correction available, and it is the mechanism that most often stops a loss in progress.

Writing the household version

Rules only work if the other people in the house have them too, and the person most likely to be targeted is rarely the person reading this page.

Keep it to one page and make it about actions rather than warnings. Name the payment methods that are allowed and the ones that are not. Write down that nobody in the household ever reads out a code, and that anybody can ask anybody else to check something without it being an accusation. Add a line saying that if a rule was broken, saying so early is the thing that helps, because shame and delay are what turn a small loss into a large one.

For a small business selling online, the same content belongs in a short written policy rather than a family conversation, and the shape of one is in phishing scams policy template. The FTC's advice on avoiding a scam is a useful second voice to hand to somebody who thinks the household rules are excessive.

When the rule is inconvenient

It will be, and that is not a sign the rule is wrong.

A genuine seller who cannot take a platform payment loses a sale. That is a real cost, and it is smaller than the cost of the rule having an exception, because the exception is what the next approach will aim at. If you find yourself constructing a reason why this particular case is different, that is the moment the rule is doing its job. Whether the reason is real is not knowable from inside the conversation. The routes back if you decided wrong are in scam reporting and recovery.

Common questions

Is this not just refusing to trust anyone?

No. It is refusing to make trust decisions the load-bearing part of a transaction. You can be perfectly friendly with somebody and still pay through the platform.

Where should I set the amount above which the strict rules apply?

At the point where losing it would change your month. That is personal, and picking it in advance is more useful than picking it well.

What if the other person is offended?

A genuine buyer or seller has heard all of this before and finds it unremarkable. Offense at ordinary caution is itself informative.

Do these rules apply to buying from a business rather than a person?

Partly. The payment and code rules hold everywhere. The rest is aimed at private deals, where there is no company to complain to.

A rule got broken. What now?

Move immediately to the money and account steps rather than working out how it happened. The reconstruction can wait. Contacting the payment provider cannot.