Our ongoing work: tackling scams on Whatnot
At Whatnot, we’re always working hard to keep the platform a fun and trustworthy place. So today, we want to provide you with an update on how we’re tackling scams on Whatnot: detecting bad actors more quickly, shutting down their accounts, and preventing them from coming back.
When it comes to online spaces, there will likely always be bad actors trying to scam others. It’s an unfortunate reality of the internet. At Whatnot, we take scams seriously - as soon as we’re aware of a scam account, we ban it immediately, and we continuously adapt our signals and policy to detect and shut down bad actors.
While we’ve previously provided guidance on how to avoid certain scams, education is just a start. We want to do everything we can to stop scams on Whatnot before a user even sees them.
In late 2023, we saw an increase in scam attempts over direct messages. These scams included:
Seller Phishing scams: Scam accounts that pretend to buy a product from a new seller, then claim a payment error in order to direct sellers off platform (or otherwise deceive sellers into sharing payment details). We also see scam accounts that impersonate our official Whatnot accounts, asking sellers to share payment details in order to “Activate” their account. (Whatnot will never ask for your payment details over direct message or email!)
Buyer Payment scams: Scam seller accounts convince users that they’ve won fake giveaways, prompting users to share personal info and/or pay for "shipping". (All transactions on Whatnot should go through our official Whatnot payment system – please never send a seller your credit card info!)
In early 2024, we doubled down our efforts to eliminate these scams. After thoroughly investigating each scam communication, updating our review processes, and maintaining a very close feedback loop, we have:
Better Detection: We updated our automated systems to better distinguish between users sending genuine messages versus scam inquiries. Now, 99% of these scam accounts are proactively removed before they are reported to us.
Quicker Removal: We’re banning these scam accounts 12.5x more quickly compared to late 2023. By significantly reducing the time between detecting these scam messages and banning the scam account, scammers don’t have the time to carry out their scam before being banned.
We’re encouraged by these results, so we wanted to share them with you here. It can be hard to talk about our work on Trust & Safety -- we can't always share the details of our efforts because we risk educating bad actors on how to work around the systems we build to protect Whatnot. As is the case across the internet, the scammers will continue to test our systems and try to get around our safety mechanisms. We’re monitoring closely to ensure that we evolve and stay ahead of scam behavior.
One of the best signals we have is you! If you receive any suspicious messages, or see any unusual activity on the app, please report it to us by clicking on their username in a livestream or direct message, then selecting the ‘report’ option through our in-app reporting flow. Our in-app reporting flow is the fastest way to get our attention and resolve an issue; if you have any additional questions, you can always reach out to us by contacting Whatnot Support.
We want our users to be aware of scams on the platform, but rest assured that we’re working diligently to eliminate scams.
