How do scammers know which shops are new?

[thePaperFramer]

We have all seen zillions of threads about the efforts of scammers to bilk/cheat/steal, etc from our shops. And they seem to prey mostly on the new and innocent. How are they doing it?

How do they know which shops are new? Do they use bots to look up every shop and somehow scrap enough info from the shop's home page to tell if it's new? I can't image that it is done by a person. Or is the Etsy API  leaky enough to allow access to that data? Or is it by some other method? Inquiring minds (mostly me at the moment), want to know.

How?

[ThePurplePuppy]

I'm not sure but I can think of several ways.  One--they have bots to scrape Etsy for shops with no sales.  Most of those shops would be new or newish. Two,  I saw a techie type person here in the forurm the other day saying this info is for sale on the "dark" web.

[Arcalliq]

I asked this question few weeks back and what I got was:

- Etsy's 'new seller roll call' postings 

-  you can search for 'New Etsy shop' on google and one of the first results is directly from Etsy: 'Check out our new etsy shop selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our guides & how tos shops'

[dippeldiundscribble]

The number of sellers participating in the "new seller roll call" is too low to be considered a significant source for these scammers.

[bradgoodell]

@dippeldiundscribble  Also, numerous new shops have said they received their first scam message within minutes of listing their first item.  That is usually long before they've discovered the forum. 

[cindylouwho2]

It's fairly easy to do if you understand the technology. I am not going to explain the possibilities here because I don't want to increase the problems LOL (but neither of the answers above me are the most likely ways this is being done)

[PieceByNumberQuilts]

This inquiring mind also wants to know!  (are we dating ourselves with that reference? lol)  

I believe there has to be something that's automated, because many who have posted about receiving these scam messages report that they arrive within minutes of having opened/re-opened their shop or posted new items.  And it is also clear that there are more than one groups of scammers at work, so possibly they all have their individual M.O.s, some automated and other more manual.  

[AAANativeArts]

It says on your store front how many sales you have. That is info that can be pulled from Etsy's API which anyone can use if they know how. Someone has probably designed a tool, similar to the way eRank or Everbee pull market analysis for Etsy, but instead pulls whatever they need to make scraping Etsy for the new sellers easy.

Smaller, less experienced scammers probably just look thru Etsy manually to find the kinds of accounts thy think might not be as familiar with Etsy's processes and would more likely be vulnerable to falling for a scam.

[PieceByNumberQuilts]

Does Etsy do any kind of vetting of who is given access to the API?  Or is this just like a big open book to anyone who wants to rummage around our data?

[cutebutton]

I had wondered the same thing and had also wondered if there was a way that it could be made harder to figure that info out since it is the new shops that seem to be targeted. 

I'm sure with all the tech though that there really isn't much that could be done to deter it unfortunately

[dippeldiundscribble]

This question has been asked before:

https://community.etsy.com/t5/Managing-Your-Shop/How-Are-Scammers-Able-to-Target-New-Shops-How-Can-T...

[mommawhazelsquilts]

I haven't seen it for a while, but there used to be a Forum post every months for new shops to post in.  I never thought that was a good idea - especially after the scamming started.

Come to think about it, I don't think I have seen that post in the last couple of months, but that doesn't mean it isn't still around.

[hopeandjoystudios]

The million dollar question. It doesn't make you feel especially secure, does it?

[bradgoodell]

All new listings are assigned a new listing number.  If the scammers use a bot to send messages to all the shops with new (not renewed, not copied) listings, most of the shops they will target will be those who just added numerous new listings.  

That's my guess, anyway.