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I am selling some fairly expensive furniture on CraigsList. A few hours after posting, I received an offer. They said to send them my PayPal email and the address so that movers could come pick it up when payment is received. This was discussed via text message, so they already have my phone number.

I am sketched out a bit by this. They did not ask to come see the furniture in person. When I offered, they said they were too busy with work. They did not ask questions about the furniture. They just said they would take it at full price.

Is it safe to give my PayPal email address and my Home Address to this person? Or is that enough information to steal from me?

Evorlor
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  • "*give my PayPal email and home address to a stranger*": where is the difference with any usual order where the client pays the seller through PayPal and communicate his address for delivery? – WhiteWinterWolf Jul 23 '15 at 08:16
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    You don't get PayPal seller protection if they collect in person. I've heard of a [scam going](http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3384012) where the attacker actually gives someone else your PayPal details who think they are paying the attacker for some goods of similar value to yours. Because your PayPal details are being used and you did not supply the other victim with any goods, the payment gets reversed. – SilverlightFox Jul 23 '15 at 10:38
  • I had something similar happen on CL. They offered to buy it sight unseen and wanted my address and PayPal info so they could send movers over to get the stuff. Set off warning bells in my head so I ignored them. Never heard from them again – Wayne In Yak Jul 23 '15 at 15:25
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    In Vancouver, the police encourage people to do craigslist transactions in their lobby. Perhaps your city has something similar. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/high-risk-craigslist-deals-can-now-be-done-at-vancouver-police-hq-1.3017956 – Neil McGuigan Jul 23 '15 at 17:44
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    Depends on the stranger. But, knowing people and playing the odds... No. Trust no one. Humans are terrible people. – Parthian Shot Jul 23 '15 at 22:51

2 Answers2

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The whole affair sounds strange or at least unusual, indeed.

Is it safe to give my PayPal email address and my Home Address to this person?

As mentioned on Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2013. Overall Statistics for 2013 DDoS attacks and mass spying on personal information are one of the main activities of attackers.

In this article (Data Breach QuickView, An Executive’s Guide to 2013 Data Breach Trends), you can also see percentage of interest in personal data of nefarious people:

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In your case, you are likely to be a victim of a social engineering procedure.

Bu what could be done by your data ? You could be either impersonated, or seeing your email address under regular spams reception -or even being contacted by the same people using a malicious email that could solicitation you for example to visit a link that will perform a drive-by download attack to install malware on your computer or control it) or, in the case these people know you, try to guess or crack your password since these efforts would be rewarded.

What I mentioned is in terms of security threats (or the pessimistic point of view), otherwise it could be just some immature people who do not take their job too seriously -which thing is rare but exists anyway.

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PayPal caters to the buyer in most instances where there is a dispute. You're much better off accepting cash as you know that it cannot be retracted via a dispute. As @begueradj said, it sounds like a social engineering procedure. The fact that they make no attempt to check out the furniture is a large red flag.

gkubed
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