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Scammers Exploit Home Rental Listings With 'Let Yourself In' Link

Saturday May 4, 2019. 11:34 PM , from Slashdot
'American Homes For Rent is a publicly traded company that owns more than 50,000 properties,' writes Slashdot reader McGruber -- calling our attention to a glaring security error. 'Its website has a tab on its listings that says 'Let Yourself In.' If you click it, you are taken to Rently.com, a website that sells the lockbox codes to anyone for only $0.99.' And those lockboxes contain a key to the vacant home being advertised.
But what's to stop a scammer from pretending that they're the home-owner, and then sending you the code for that same lockbox so you can tour 'their' home -- before they then ask you to wire a deposit?
Ciarra McConnell was one of the scam's 'several' unsuspecting victims, reports CBS46 in Atlanta:
'The lockbox is what made it seem legitimate, and he gave me the key,' said Ciarra. Once she got the key, the scammer emailed a phony lease. Ciarra then wired a $1,900 deposit and moved in. The next morning an American Homes For Rent employee was at her door. 'They were just like yup, nope sorry we can't do anything for you but you need to get out,' she explained.
The scammers post duplicates of real home listings on Craigslist -- and then ask to be paid through a bitcoin ATM.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.
rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/pRJwg0AlwaQ/scammers-exploit-home-rental-listings-with-let-...
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