Cristobal Alonso, CEO of MOBOfree.com has said he believes most online scammers (about 90%) have same specific behavior patterns. And with Africa experiencing an e-Commerce revolution, more and more African consumers are looking for ways to protect themselves against scammers.
“African consumers need to adopt some key habits in order to avoid fraudsters,” he said.
These habits include keeping things local.
“Meet the seller in person, check the item and make sure you are satisfied with it before you make a payment,” he said.
He also urged customers not to pay in advance, not even for delivery.
“Buyers – don’t make any payments before receiving an item. Sellers – don’t send an item before receiving payment. Exchange item and payment at the same time,” he said.
He added that transactions should be done in public and safe places.
“Before meeting, try to collect as much information as possible about the individual you are going to meet,” he said.
He also warned against giving out financial information such as bank account details, eBay/PayPal information, and any other information that could be misused.
He urged buyers and sellers to buy and sell only on the most trusted marketplaces with robust security measures.
“Avoid those that have no content monitoring or clearly outlined security measures,” he said.
“Use common sense. If the deal looks too good to be true – it is most likely a scam. Nobody sells new cars for half the price or new iPhones for 200 Nairas.”
“At MOBOfree, we have a wide range of unique measures, which makes MOBOfree the safest and most trusted marketplace in Nigeria, Uganda and other African countries. We protect our users by ensuring that only honest, real people are buying and selling on our platform,’’ says Cristobal Alonso.
“Our priority is to eliminate scam BEFORE it becomes visible to buyers; before someone gets scammed, before they lose money or report suspicious behavior. At MOBOfree, we don’t just play the “you inform us, we react” game. Such a basic security measure as the possibility to report ads is not enough to guarantee the security of the African consumer,” says the CEO of MOBOfree.
MOBOfree has a special automated algorithm identifying scam behavior. He adds, ‘’You might be surprised but 90% of scammers have the same specific behavior patterns on our platform and in many cases we can say a person is carrying out or going to carry out some form of illegal activity even before seeing the content of his or her classifieds.’’
