Planning to sell stuff on OLX, Quikr? You might be cheated by fraudsters - Don't make these mistakes

OLX and Quikr have emerged as the top go-to options for selling your old items in India. Both these platforms offer an easy way to sell off appliances and other items that you don't intend to use anymore. However, given their popularity, these platforms are now being targeted by fraudsters with the intention to rob people of their hard-earned money. These fraudsters are allegedly using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based transactions to fool people and steal their money very easily. Their success actually depends on lack of understanding on customers part and their urgency to sell stuff. Yes, you read that right! Innocent customers must be careful and not make mistakes that can lead to losing money even in their bank accounts. 

The fraudsters phone the sellers of products on OLX and Quikr, posing as buyers as soon as an ad is placed on these platforms. They promise to pay the price you have quoted for the item and create panic by urging you to close the deal as early as possible. Once the deal is fixed, the caller could say that s/he would send the money through PhonePe, Google Pe or other UPI apps.

Cyber security expert Amit Dubey told Zee Business Online that this type of method is pulled off by creating panic among sellers as they are also in a hurry to sell off their products. Dubey explained that this is where people miss out on important details. 

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What happens is that these fraudsters "Request Money", instead of sending it to the sellers. And, in most cases people do not read the SMS properly and fall prey to the tricks by sharing their OTP and end up transferring their own money to them. People often tend to forget that if someone sends them money, they do not get OTP! The entire transaction ends in a big loss for the person selling his product.

"In the last six months, we have identified hundreds of cellphone numbers, which we suspect are of fraudsters and have blocked them. Of the total listings OLX receives each day, nearly 25% of ads are rejected and over 100,000 suspicious accounts are banned every month," said Lavanya Chandan, General Counsel, OLX India.

To make sure that such cases are controlled, OLX has partnered with Cyber Peace Foundation, a civil society organization and think tank of cyber security. As part of this partnership, workshops will be conducted with users on how to stay safe on the Internet, including on C2C platforms so that they can get the most from their Internet experience. 

For now, all you can do is read every piece of information very carefully and make sure that you do not share personal information and bank details with anyone else.