Empire z hacked7/9/2023 “They were talking like a stereotypical girl on the internet,” Sophia says. Reading through her messages, Sophia realised that the scammer had tricked people into sending money directly to their bank account for the phone. After Lee queried when his Switch would be arriving, the account disappeared. She was friendly and chatty, and the account had good reviews. “I don’t know why I trusted her, but it felt genuine.” The seller claimed to be a mother selling a Switch her children didn’t want. Josh Lee, a 20-year-old student from Oxfordshire, was duped into sending a Depop scammer £150 for a Nintendo Switch in late April. The account’s real user sends a panicked, apologetic follow up to Bryce: “hi i did not send that I don’t know what’s happening I changed my password and everything… I’m emailing depop about this right now.” “Fuck you bitches and ezi £100 pussios ,” the hacker writes, followed by the sunglasses emoji. ” Patterson forwards me the messages: in them, the hacker taunts both Bryce and the account’s owner. “They blocked him and sent him taunting messages,” Patterson sighs. Dumfries student Luna Patterson’s 13-year-old brother Bryce was scammed out of £150 after someone hacked a legitimate account and tricked him into sending money through PayPal family and friends for a non-existent Nintendo Switch. “Hi sorry my account has been hacked and I’m not actually selling these,” the account owner responded to my inquiry about some AirPods.īeing a victim of Depop scammers can be a frightening and unnerving experience, particularly as so many Depop users are barely in their teens. In another instance, I messaged a scammer as the account’s owner realised she was being hacked. Of the eight who responded, three asked for me to pay for the item using bank transfer or PayPal family and friends, refusing any other form of payment. In the course of writing this article, I messaged 13 Depop users offering Nintendo Switches and AirPods for low prices. By February, the scam appeared widespread, and it’s still ongoing to this day: searching the platform for Nintendo Switch and AirPods, I could see scammers hacking accounts in real time: burying scam listings in long-dormant accounts, and updating item descriptions to read “message before buying”. The earliest reference VICE UK found on Depop Community to this particular scam is from December 2019. Hamilton believes the scammers are European: they tend to use the word “mum” rather than “mom” in messages, and adopt other European affectations such as ending messages with the letter “x”. The buyer sends them the money – only for the scammer to block them, delete the listing and disappear with their money. But if they are still cautious about sending money outside the app, hackers will sometimes say that their PayPal has been blocked due to their own account being hacked by Depop scammers – a useful meta-lie – and offer to accept half bank transfer in advance and half on delivery of the item to put buyers at ease. Usually, the fact that the hacked account has multiple genuine reviews will be enough to reassure nervous buyers. They’re just putting a Band-Aid over the issue – because the scammers turn around and hack another account on the very same day.” “It’s great that Depop is helping users get their accounts back relatively quickly,” Hamilton says, “but they are losing the trust of the people who fell for the scams, plus the victims of the scammers are not getting their money back. It said that it “received all of reports of fraud and/or hacker activity and can confirm that every single report was resolved within 24 hours of receiving them” by suspending or banning the fraudulent accounts. In a statement to VICE UK, Depop denied that there has been a broader security breach. Unlike competitors, its user requirements are comparatively relaxed: users do not have to use their real name, and there is no two-factor verification, as is used by competitors such as eBay. Users can be very young: you only need to be 13 years old and up to join. Beloved of teens, around 90 percent of Depop’s 15 million active users are aged under 26. Founded in 2011 by entrepreneur Simon Beckerman, Depop has grown to become one of the most popular reselling platforms in the world.
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