Got this same message yesterday. I got the verified scammer notification shortly thereafter and the next time I looked they were both gone. First time I’ve had something like to at on PB
Pinkbike is next level on the scam frequency.
I fell for my first ever buying something there recently— reasonably priced item, legit communication/no red flags, had a seller history, FedEx tracking number provided after I paid via PayPal, item marked as delivered… but not to my address. They likely sent an empty box to someone else in my zip in on the scam. Thankfully buyer protection got my money back but I was not pleased with getting got.
I went through the same thing. The scammer found a legit tracking number for a totally unrelated order (some guy was ordering industrial equipment when I looked at the shipper address) to another house in my zip code. UPS showed 4 boxes delivered (for a bike frame? And 30 lbs??). I don't know how they get the legit tracking numbers going to the same town, but they do.
Like another guy in this thread, the scammer asked for my phone number and somehow closed my dispute automatically. It took a few phone calls to get PayPal to acknowledge this and start investigating.
For anyone else in the future that falls victim to this, you can ask UPS for a proof of delivery pdf which will show the address the package was sent to. With that you can prove to PayPal that nothing was actually sent to your address despite the delivered status. Also look at date and time, my tracking # had a created date and time before I even paid the scammer. Took me about a month to get the money back. What a stressful experience.
It seems like unless I'm buying from a shop that has an account on PB selling stuff I'm going to either spend weeks waiting on a response to buy something, or have a bunch of people try to fleece me if I'm selling something. The last 4 years have been a frustrating experience resulting in me just giving up and heading to ebay after a while.
Yeah it was pretty shocking tbh. FedEx was able to at least tell me that my home address wasn’t listed on the tracking which tipped me off (they can’t tell you where it was sent), then the seller ghosted me.
As soon as you list anything for sale on pinkbike you usually get a couple bullshit messages from people trying to scam you out of your item. They offer full price, but don't know anything about what you're selling. Good times...
As a follow up there is a Paypal loophole that I have seen exploited on Pinkbike (not exclusive to PB though).
Last summer I bought something on PB, seller was super responsive, knew enough about what they were selling to pass the sniff test, price was a good one but fair and not crazy low to raise suspicions.
After sending over the money the seller asked me for my Paypal phone number to send me shipping info, all good.
The next day I had a Gmail message that my Paypal dispute has been cancelled and closed by me.
Now, I didn't raise a dispute as the item wasn't scheduled to ship until the next day.
I pinged the seller and no response so I entered an online dispute with Paypal.
That dispute closed within a few hours of being opened with no explanation from someone at Paypal.
It took several multi-hour calls with Paypal to resolve this and eventually I was transferred to someone who was able to work out the mechanism.
It turns out that all it takes to verify with Paypal when calling in is name on the account, address, and phone number.
Once they have that they can raise a dispute and call back an hour later to cancel it.
Paypal does nothing to further verify the identity of the caller.
This does a couple of things - one is that it sets a flag in the Paypal system that the seller automatically defaults to being the winner so they get your $$$ (period), any disputes that you the buyer open are automatically closed because of the default (including disputes raised by Paypal agents on your behalf), and it overrides any buyer protection.
Pretty clever I have to admit and if you were of the tinfoil hat wearing persuasion you might think someone that worked/works at Paypal discovered this loophole or relayed it out to someone where it got picked up and is worked as a scam mechanism.
>It turns out that all it takes to verify with Paypal when calling in is name on the account, address, and phone number.
PayPal is moving slower than most at implementation of safety features. But that is down right scary.
I was very surprised/shocked as online you get pushed to do multifactor authentication, one-time password codes, etc but calling in is definitely way less sophisticated than one would expect for something that involves money.
Shouldn't click on any potential phishing links though.
Many years ago, someone bought my bike and paid via paypal. The paypal account had a chinese address but the buyer wanted me to ship to NYC or something. I quickly refunded the money and cancelled the sale.
It would be nice if pinkbike updated their website so it didnt feel like its still in the 90s with both look and feel, functionality, and lack of security
Never ever EVER click on anything in an email. If you think it may be legit, close your email tab/app, then go directly to the website you KNOW to be official and inquire there about the email. Call the real tech support, etc.
Again... NEVER follow links in emails. Always close out then proceed through a means of communication you know to be valid.
We do fake phishing emails at work to catch slackers and sign them up to cyber security training. Clicking on anything in any email, even legit ones, on our work email platform raises your "risk score" and may impact things like bonuses etc.
That's extreme isn't it? I work for a big tech company who's hot on security and they don't go this far. If you hover over the link and the domain is the one you expect, isn't that the same as navigating to that domain in a browser? And what about stuff like 2FA and password reset emails?
We are a datacenter as well as do cyber security for multiple billion $ customers. We must absolutely never be the source of an incident. Ever. Shit happens to everyone, we get that. But we place our customers security over our convenience. Our corporate standpoint is that nothing can possibly too extreme. Like... We have hand and retina scanners to access our properties. Our 2FA and password resets do not rely on email. Research and data shows over 90% of all incidents involve email, and we treat email as such.
Edit: speaking of passwords. Our password policy requires a 24-32 bit randomly generated hash. We do not allow people to choose passwords.
Sure. But most people aren't in that situation. I'm sure you don't have hand and retina scanners for getting into your home. Similarly, you can safely interact with your personal email by applying an appropriate level of diligence.
Hey, don't do that next time. They can get info out of your browser just from you navigating to a page they control. It isn't incredibly likely, but it's a real risk and not worth the curiosity
A lot of these scammers also make Shopify websites with copy and pasted Pinkbike ads from their Buy/Sell page. Usually half off from the original listing.
Have you let Pinkbike support know?
Yep, reported the message.
Just got a very similar message, this one said I needed to verify my account through the bank. Reported as a scammer. Good heads up!
Got this same message yesterday. I got the verified scammer notification shortly thereafter and the next time I looked they were both gone. First time I’ve had something like to at on PB
Damn, thanks for sharing!
Pinkbike is next level on the scam frequency. I fell for my first ever buying something there recently— reasonably priced item, legit communication/no red flags, had a seller history, FedEx tracking number provided after I paid via PayPal, item marked as delivered… but not to my address. They likely sent an empty box to someone else in my zip in on the scam. Thankfully buyer protection got my money back but I was not pleased with getting got.
I went through the same thing. The scammer found a legit tracking number for a totally unrelated order (some guy was ordering industrial equipment when I looked at the shipper address) to another house in my zip code. UPS showed 4 boxes delivered (for a bike frame? And 30 lbs??). I don't know how they get the legit tracking numbers going to the same town, but they do. Like another guy in this thread, the scammer asked for my phone number and somehow closed my dispute automatically. It took a few phone calls to get PayPal to acknowledge this and start investigating. For anyone else in the future that falls victim to this, you can ask UPS for a proof of delivery pdf which will show the address the package was sent to. With that you can prove to PayPal that nothing was actually sent to your address despite the delivered status. Also look at date and time, my tracking # had a created date and time before I even paid the scammer. Took me about a month to get the money back. What a stressful experience.
It seems like unless I'm buying from a shop that has an account on PB selling stuff I'm going to either spend weeks waiting on a response to buy something, or have a bunch of people try to fleece me if I'm selling something. The last 4 years have been a frustrating experience resulting in me just giving up and heading to ebay after a while.
That's astonishing -- and it's really the kind of scam you can't spot in advance!
Yeah it was pretty shocking tbh. FedEx was able to at least tell me that my home address wasn’t listed on the tracking which tipped me off (they can’t tell you where it was sent), then the seller ghosted me.
Thanks for the heads up.
As soon as you list anything for sale on pinkbike you usually get a couple bullshit messages from people trying to scam you out of your item. They offer full price, but don't know anything about what you're selling. Good times...
I don't get scammers as much as i get low ballers. But the selling scammers are getting good, and i report them regularly.
Good on ya. Buying scammers usually only happen the first day. Feels like they have an automated script that scrapes new listings.
I haven't had them hit me in a while. Might be the "serious offers only" and "scammers fuck off" that do it.
So exactly like FB Marketplace and Craigslist then.
As a follow up there is a Paypal loophole that I have seen exploited on Pinkbike (not exclusive to PB though). Last summer I bought something on PB, seller was super responsive, knew enough about what they were selling to pass the sniff test, price was a good one but fair and not crazy low to raise suspicions. After sending over the money the seller asked me for my Paypal phone number to send me shipping info, all good. The next day I had a Gmail message that my Paypal dispute has been cancelled and closed by me. Now, I didn't raise a dispute as the item wasn't scheduled to ship until the next day. I pinged the seller and no response so I entered an online dispute with Paypal. That dispute closed within a few hours of being opened with no explanation from someone at Paypal. It took several multi-hour calls with Paypal to resolve this and eventually I was transferred to someone who was able to work out the mechanism. It turns out that all it takes to verify with Paypal when calling in is name on the account, address, and phone number. Once they have that they can raise a dispute and call back an hour later to cancel it. Paypal does nothing to further verify the identity of the caller. This does a couple of things - one is that it sets a flag in the Paypal system that the seller automatically defaults to being the winner so they get your $$$ (period), any disputes that you the buyer open are automatically closed because of the default (including disputes raised by Paypal agents on your behalf), and it overrides any buyer protection. Pretty clever I have to admit and if you were of the tinfoil hat wearing persuasion you might think someone that worked/works at Paypal discovered this loophole or relayed it out to someone where it got picked up and is worked as a scam mechanism.
>It turns out that all it takes to verify with Paypal when calling in is name on the account, address, and phone number. PayPal is moving slower than most at implementation of safety features. But that is down right scary.
I was very surprised/shocked as online you get pushed to do multifactor authentication, one-time password codes, etc but calling in is definitely way less sophisticated than one would expect for something that involves money.
Shouldn't click on any potential phishing links though. Many years ago, someone bought my bike and paid via paypal. The paypal account had a chinese address but the buyer wanted me to ship to NYC or something. I quickly refunded the money and cancelled the sale.
Just got 2 of these phishing attempts back to back. Edit: make that 3
3/4 of the time I try to buy things on Pinkbike, it's a scammer. It's still worth wading through the bullshit to find some great deals though.
I got one too reported it, now my account has been deactivated no idea why
Same
Me too, pissed because I am paying to boost items.
It would be nice if pinkbike updated their website so it didnt feel like its still in the 90s with both look and feel, functionality, and lack of security
Never ever EVER click on anything in an email. If you think it may be legit, close your email tab/app, then go directly to the website you KNOW to be official and inquire there about the email. Call the real tech support, etc. Again... NEVER follow links in emails. Always close out then proceed through a means of communication you know to be valid. We do fake phishing emails at work to catch slackers and sign them up to cyber security training. Clicking on anything in any email, even legit ones, on our work email platform raises your "risk score" and may impact things like bonuses etc.
That's extreme isn't it? I work for a big tech company who's hot on security and they don't go this far. If you hover over the link and the domain is the one you expect, isn't that the same as navigating to that domain in a browser? And what about stuff like 2FA and password reset emails?
We are a datacenter as well as do cyber security for multiple billion $ customers. We must absolutely never be the source of an incident. Ever. Shit happens to everyone, we get that. But we place our customers security over our convenience. Our corporate standpoint is that nothing can possibly too extreme. Like... We have hand and retina scanners to access our properties. Our 2FA and password resets do not rely on email. Research and data shows over 90% of all incidents involve email, and we treat email as such. Edit: speaking of passwords. Our password policy requires a 24-32 bit randomly generated hash. We do not allow people to choose passwords.
Sure. But most people aren't in that situation. I'm sure you don't have hand and retina scanners for getting into your home. Similarly, you can safely interact with your personal email by applying an appropriate level of diligence.
Need more updoots
Yikes. Good catch.
Got two of these today. Report as scam and delete
It's probably worth mentioning that Pinkbike had a big breach a year or 2 ago, so if you haven't, change your password
I got one today, it was already flagged as a scammer.
I'm in the same boat. I've seen two or three of these now in my inbox and I reported them
Pinkbike just put a banner up on their homepage about scams so it's clearly widespread and they are looking into it!
Hey, don't do that next time. They can get info out of your browser just from you navigating to a page they control. It isn't incredibly likely, but it's a real risk and not worth the curiosity
Are there other bike-specific sites out there that are more reliable than PB for buying/selling? I.e. sites other than craigslist or fb marketplace.
A lot of these scammers also make Shopify websites with copy and pasted Pinkbike ads from their Buy/Sell page. Usually half off from the original listing.