How to spot scammers when looking for accommodation while studying abroad

Forums are supposed to be a place for everyone to help each other, but now more and more bad people are targeting the international student population, constantly posting phishing links on the forums. It's really shameless!
Many GWU students were among those who were admitted to the program.Every semester, several families have been scammed out of hundreds of thousands of yuan.Even if you have millions in savings, losing hundreds of thousands is still a significant amount. Therefore, I hope everyone will be vigilant and avoid this kind of thing happening to them.

The general principle behind these scams is simple: they trick you into handing over your QQ account and password, then the scammers use your identity to contact your family and ask for money transfers under various pretexts.
Most people would probably say,

However, many people are actually fooled because scammers use various methods to make you believe that your password entry is secure and unseen by others. For example, the most common method is to send you a link claiming it's for QQ Space. You click on it, and the page asks you to log in, so you enter your account and password. But in reality, that webpage is created by scammers. You're not actually logging into QQ Space; you're letting a fake website record your account information, and that's how the scammers succeed. These phishing websites specifically target those who are completely ignorant about internet technology. To see what a phishing website looks like, please see a template on this site:http://qzone.qq.com.pianzi.hellogwu.com/(If there were no prompt, wouldn't you be tempted to log in? If so, congratulations, you're a potential big fish for scammers.)
How can we prevent this kind of scam? Our beloved website administrator...@ParadiseFootball I've already written a basic introductory post, please, please read it:http://www.hellogwu.com/thread-10333-1-2.html

Let's get more specific. Most of us who are new to the forum are students who have already decided to study at GWU, and our biggest concern is finding housing, which is also where we know the least. Scammers love to target gullible, easy targets like you. The forum deletes several scam posts every day, even those with genuine replies from students asking serious questions like "I've added you as a friend/How much is the house?" So, how do the administrators know which posts are scams? It's simple: posts with phishing URLs are scams! What, you're asking how to tell if it's a phishing URL? Please look up one paragraph; click on the link at the end and then come back to ask me.

However, scammers these days are incredibly dedicated, becoming increasingly sophisticated in their methods. They no longer blatantly include phishing links in posts, giving administrators no reason to delete them. So how do they scam people? It's simple: they claim to have a rental property and are looking for roommates, then leave a QQ number for you to add as a friend. During the chat, they send you a phishing website link. Therefore, if you can learn to distinguish legitimate website links, you won't fall for them easily. So please take another look at the link above.

If you want to save time, it's possible to determine whether someone is a scammer based on the posts.
To identify scammers, just focus on one thing: their posts are very vague and lack substance! Because they target students from many places, they can't provide specific details. Such posts could appear on any university forum without any issues. The most common example is:

The key point of this type of post:
1. I won't list the rent. If I did, it would be very low, around 0 for a single room (probably because rents in other parts of the US are around that level). Those who read forum posts should know that it's impossible to find such cheap housing within a 10-minute walk of GWU.
2. Do not write the apartment name, because if you do, people can just Google it and find that there is no such apartment building within a ten-minute walk of our school (of course, some students find good apartments but do not want to publish the name for fear of being snatched up, but real posts will not have all these key points at the same time).
3. The housing information is inaccurate. For example, the quote above mentions "water heater"—which DC international student would say that? Or it might say there's a XXX supermarket nearby, but that supermarket is likely common in other parts of the US and doesn't exist in DC. Just check other people's rental listings. Additionally, I suggest you read the housing section of the freshman handbook before searching for housing to get a basic understanding and see what keywords other people use (freshman handbook download link: [link]).http://www.hellogwu.com/thread-9927-1-1.html；以后会有更新，是否有最新版发布请到hellogwu.com首页上找）；
4. Incomplete information: Some things in the post are not clearly written, so you want to ask for clarification. However, since the scammers may not be in the United States, they will not leave a phone number, or they will deliberately leave a number that cannot be reached (so what if you do get through? They will still send you a phishing link in the end, so you have to contact them via QQ or email).
5. False enthusiasm. For example, the quote above mentions shared kitchenware, which seems like a sales pitch, but in reality, it doesn't mention anything the renter truly cares about: How big is the apartment? Is it shared or is the entire large bedroom for rent? How far is it from the subway station? etc. Note that scammers love to say the bus stop is right outside, sometimes even writing down the bus line names (of course, they're made up). But DC has a well-developed subway system, and students don't specifically mention buses; instead, they emphasize the proximity to the subway station. However! Some listings are indeed not near a subway station and can only mention convenient public transportation, but they'll say it's very convenient to get to XXX by bus. And XXX is indeed a popular place, like Pentagon City Shopping Mall. Scammers often only mention convenient public transportation, without specifying where it's convenient to go.

After noting the above points, if you feel the post is suspicious and the person sends you a website address under the guise of "seeing photos" when you contact them via QQ, then you can be sure it's a scam.

Advanced tutorial:
1. If the post mentions an apartment name, please search for it yourself to see if such an apartment actually exists. Don't assume that just because a name is mentioned, it's not a scam. These days, scammers on forums know to specify "near Crystal City." If you still get scammed by a non-existent apartment, then I don't know what to say.
2. Although scammers' posts may include "crystal house" in the title, the content won't change much. Compare it with other people's posts to see if it's legitimate. Read other people's information, learn what to pay attention to when renting on GWU, and learn to distinguish between genuine and fake listings before contacting them.
3. Posts with photos are always attractive, but scammers usually don't take their own photos; they download them from the internet (some are clearly domestic interior design, and some even have obvious watermarks from other websites). Genuine rental listings often focus on showing the floor plan, and the photos of the actual apartment are usually messy, with clothes piled on the bed, and the living room is definitely occupied (unless the post states that the living room is unoccupied). The lighting is usually soft, yellowish. It's recommended to look at other rental listings with pictures in the rental forum; after seeing many, you might be able to appreciate the differences from domestic interior design.
4. Click on "Topics" or "Posts" in the author information on the left side of the post to see what other posts this person has made. If these posts are all about renting, and the information is completely different, then it's definitely a scam. Or, if someone posts many things about renting, used goods, cars, or even dating, each with rich content, but never asks questions or shares experiences, and never replies to other people's posts, then they are almost certainly a scammer.

If you find a post suspicious or are certain it's a scam, please click "Report" in the bottom right corner at the end of the first post. This will allow the administrators to process problematic posts more quickly and avoid overlooking any. Maintaining good order requires everyone's cooperation. We hope everyone can help each other keep helloGWU.com clean and tidy!

Given the difficulty in preventing scams, please provide as much detail as possible when posting rental listings to avoid accidental deletion by the administrators. If your listing is accidentally deleted, please send a private message to the moderator (mentioned at the beginning of the forum section) or the administrators @Sunny and @天堂足球.