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Kijiji US Safety Tips
While most individuals who use Kijiji have success with buying, selling, renting or connecting with others, from time to time we do get reports of people attempting to scam or defraud our users. We have found that one of the best ways to address this problem is to
ensure that all transactions take place locally and in-person.
Remember that Kijiji is a local classifieds web site and ads are not reviewed before they go live on the site.
You should take the following precautions:
- When buying or selling, you should meet in-person to see the product and exchange funds. Kijiji is all about local transactions.
- Never send or wire money to sellers or buyers. This includes never mailing a check or using payment services like Bidpay, Western Union or Money Gram to pay for items found on Kijiji.
- Kijiji US does not offer any sort of buyer protection programs or secure payment systems. Any emails or web sites that talk about such systems are scams, even if they may have the Kijiji logo. If you receive any emails promoting these services, please forward the message to us.
- Never provide your personal or banking information (e.g. social insurance number, credit card number) to others over the Internet. Never give out your Kijiji password, even if asked to do so in an email supposedly sent by Kijiji employees.
- Make yourself aware of common scams and fraud (see below). Do not believe the promise of large sums of money for your help in any task.
- Inform Kijiji of any attempted fraud or suspicious emails, ads, or other activity by community members. In case of fraud, file a police report and contact us. (See below for more details on reporting scams and fraud.)
- Use common sense. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Common scams and fraud:
- Brand name spoofing/phishing: You get an email that claims to be from Kijiji, eBay, Western Union, or another company and offers buyer protection or an online payment system. These emails will typically request that you send money via this site or provide personal information. Kijiji and most other companies will never send out such emails. If you send money via these sites you are likely sending money to the fraudsters.
- Overpayment: A buyer or seller will send you a check and then ask for money to be returned to them. Often the check will bounce and you will have lost all money you sent to the other party.
- Payment for brokerage/importing: A seller claims that there are brokerage fees, import duties, or other such fees required to get an item into the USA. Do not pay such fees, as you will most often never get the product and will have lost any money you paid. Again, Kijiji is designed for local, in-person trading.
- Fake escrow sites: A buyer or seller suggests using an escrow service to complete the transaction. Often these escrow web sites are run by fraudsters (even though they may look "official") and they will take your money and never send you the product.
- Work from home: Many work from home offers are "pyramid schemes" which require you to recruit other members in order to get paid. For example, an ad may say that you can make $100 an hour by stuffing envelopes. But to make that money, you need to sell the system to others.
- 419 Scams: You get an email saying that your help is needed to help take money out of a country and that you will be paid a commission for your help. Eventually they will ask you for money to help them take the large amount of money out of the country and once you pay you will never hear from them again.
How to report scams and fraud:
- If you see an ad on the Kijiji site that you suspect is Spam, illegal, or otherwise violates Kijiji's policies, please click on the links found under "Report this Ad" in the bottom right of the ad's page. Reporting ads brings the ad to our attention so that we will review and can take it down quickly if appropriate.
- You can also use the "Report illegal/infringing Ad" link on an ad's page to send an email to the Kijiji staff regarding a certain ad.
- If you reply to an ad and the person who posted the ad emails you with a suspicious request (eg. asks for money to be sent to them via a payment service), please forward us the email and stop all communications with that person.
- If you are the victim of fraud, inform Kijiji and your local police service.
If you have any other security questions that aren't answered above, then please contact us.
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