Scammers....

It's about time I got back to a post about Proprietating. Given my posts of the past year, a person would be forgiven for not knowing that the art of proprietation is about running a cooperative household.

Since we prefer short term renters, it means we have more turn over than most landlords. More turn over means more advertising and I do a fair amount of mine on the Internet. Advertising on the Internet invariably attracts scam artists. Like love and marriage, the Internet and scammers just go together.

The most common scam goes something like "A friend of mine will send you a cashier's check for more than the price and you can wire me the difference. And there will be enough left over to make it worth your while." And they want you to do it fast, before the check has a chance to clear your bank. By the time you find out their check was bogus they have picked up your money from western union and you have no recourse. Probably everything from their location to their name and story has been a lie. Maybe they only dealt with you via email. They could be anywhere. It's a simple, transparent scam, but it actual snares a lot of people. It's generally called the Nigerian check scam or an advanced fee fraud.

It's not hard to spot your average Internet scam. They are not particularly sophisticated. Invariably, they offer to pay more than you are asking or some other inducement to get you to front money in some fashion. Often their written English is poor at best. And they are going to put up some ludicrous explanation as to why they need to have you do their transaction without meeting. Something about their uncle's business dealings and maybe a family trust and how they are a British born model on shoot in Africa and on and on. And for some reason they are always putting themselves out as Evangelical Christians. Maybe they figure people will trust them more that way.

But it's really not enough to spot them. It's important to not allow them to get a toe hold with personal information. My general rule of thumb is I don't put anything on the Internet that could lead someone back to me. I don't post our postal or physical address, phone number, last name or an email that can lead back to me. All my posts go through an anonymous free email. When I do get a contact, I get a phone number to contact them at and call them rather than give them my phone number. I google their email address, phone number and any other information they give me. I don't often get a lot of information from those google searches, but any information is helpful. And when I do call, I don't call from my home phone.

Those are not fool proof rules. There are ways for a more sophisticated scam to still get through, but I have never had a scammer get close enough to get my address or other physical information before I spotted them. The one that got close was someone who used a local cell phone number to pose as a local resident. That's why it is worth finding an alternative to the home phone to make the initial contact.

The easiest thing to do is get an email from any of big players, Yahoo, Hot mail, Gmail, etc to put in your Internet advertisements. Do not put any personally identifiable information in the profile. I don't suggest making up a fake name like Susy Smith, it might be awkward to explain to your legitimate contacts. Instead, something that is obviously anonymous like John Q Public or maybe first name: Selling last name: MyBoat that matches your advertising.

It is a fine line. There are definitely people reading my ad that are uncomfortable giving out their information just like I am. There is a hypothetical chicken or the egg thing there. But I have honestly almost never run into it. My posts advertising our room for rent is well worded and is evidently straightforward enough. I can think of only one person who questioned my you first policy on contact information. With those kinds of odds, I will accept losing a potential contact rather than expose myself to a potential scam.