02 Sep Is it safe to buy or sell items on Facebook Marketplace?

Q. Is it safe to buy or sell items on Facebook Marketplace?
— Shopper

A. Yes. And no.

Facebook Marketplace is a popular online shopping destination where you can buy or sell just about anything.

Capitol One Shopping found that some 1.228 billion online shoppers buy something on Marketplace each month.

But as you can imagine, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, doesn’t advertise how many people are scammed during these transactions.

The Star-Ledger’s Bamboozled column recently profiled a shopper who tried to buy a camera on Marketplace, but he was scammed when the seller tricked him into paying for the item privately instead of using Meta Pay, the only way you’ll get any guarantees from the social media site.

So while lots of sellers and products are legit, you’ll find some con artists. If you decide to use Marketplace, make sure to read everything the site says about avoiding scams.

And as always, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

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This story was originally published in September 2024.

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