Etsy Scam Alerts: How to Identify Fraudulent Messages

Scammers impersonating Etsy aggressively target users, exploiting panic to steal sensitive information.

### Beware of Etsy Scams: Identifying and Avoiding Fraudulent Messages
* ⚠ Recently, there has been a **significant increase in scams targeting Etsy sellers**, with scammers impersonating Etsy and requesting **sensitive information through deceptive messages**.
* 📩 These messages often claim that the seller needs to **confirm an order** or **assist a customer with payment issues**, but Etsy never requires sellers to provide their **email address or personal information** in this manner.
* 🕵 Common signs of a scam include **poor grammar**, **unusual formatting**, and the use of the **Etsy logo**, which scammers exploit despite it being **against Etsy's terms of service**.
* 🔍 An example of a scam message includes phrases like "**order processing system!**" and requests for "**email confirmation**," which are clear indicators of fraud.
* 💻 Etsy messages should always be checked through the official dashboard, as Etsy does not contact users via external emails or support chats; legitimate messages will be found in the **"from Etsy" section**.
* 🚫 If a message prompts you to click links or provide financial information, do not engage; scammers often create **fake urgency** to manipulate sellers into **acting quickly without thinking**.
* 🔑 Remember, Etsy only contacts users through their **official channels**, and any request for **sensitive information** should be treated as a **scam**.
* 🛡 ️ Always verify any suspicious communication by checking your shop dashboard and reporting fraudulent messages to Etsy to **help protect yourself and others in the community**.

hi everyone. Today, I need to talk about being scammed on Etsy by someone who is pretending to be Etsy and is sending you a message saying that you've either received an order and they need your email to confirm it, which they don't. They don't need that. Or that you have a customer who is having trouble paying, and you need to give them some more information to help them out. You don't. You don't need to do that. And these scammers have gotten very aggressive recently. Like, within the last six months, I've seen a huge uptick in people saying, I received this message, and it's really, like, in the last week or two, it's really seems to be increasing. It's not just on Etsy. I've seen the same thing kind of going on on other platforms. But a lot of people have posted in my Facebook group that they've received these messages, and they look very legitimate. A lot of the times, there's usually things that you can tell that are not right, and there's one main

way to tell that if something is, you know, that something isn't right. So, let's go and look at some of these messages because they did post some screenshots, and that's very helpful when people do that. And we can kind of look to see what these scammers are doing and how they're trying to get your information. And it's usually your financial information or just to take over your Etsy shop, and that's happened too. Let's look at this first message now. This is just something that clearly is a scam because it says, from sent you a message. Now, the thing is that these scammers are now using the Etsy logo. It is against Etsy's terms of service to use the Etsy logo or the Etsy name in anything that implies that you're an employee. But you know they're a scammer; they don't care. So, you think, Oh, well, it's coming from Etsy. They have the logo. Just because the logo is there doesn't mean that it's real. So, that's the first thing. This is clearly missing like there's a language thing.

going on, there's translations. There are certain things that you can tell in a scammer message, and this isn't just, again, on Etsy. They have Microsoft scammers. They have all kinds of scammers. If you haven't seen the scam baiting videos on YouTube, they're fantastic. They're fun to watch. You can go watch those, but this is one of the messages that someone in my group actually received. So, it says, from sent you a message. First clue, okay, that it wouldn't say that usually, although sometimes, see, sometimes they do send weird things out, so you're like, Well, maybe it is real. Okay, this says, order processing system! That's the first. The second, okay, from sent you a message is the first clue that this isn't right. Why would they put an exclamation mark at the end of order processing system? This is the language thing. Hello, your shop is temporarily unable to accept new orders. To restore the shop and see new orders in your profile, please write your email address in the chat. Okay, first of all,

email is weirdly formatted, just in a strange way. Etsy does not, they never need your email address. They have your email address. You don't need to, you know, click on a chat button in a message because that's taking you somewhere else. If they send you an email in your email, that's another clue. Etsy doesn't do that. Everything that you get from Etsy is going to be in your Etsy dashboard, and we'll look at that in a minute. But there is absolutely no reason why Etsy would send you anything saying they need your email address. It's not going to happen. So that's the first, your first, second, third clues, right? Then it says you'll be sent a notification where you can complete a simple verification regards Etsy. Okay, Etsy doesn't say regards. These are kind of language things that are very common with scammers because they're working in foreign countries. They're, you know, they have templates that they use. Somebody set it up. They all use the same types of phrases and language. If they call you dear, if they, if they say regards, if they

say best regards or something like that. They're very common terms that are used by scammers for some reason, and that this is just clearly a scam. So, if you get this, what they're counting on is that they're going to make you panicked, and this is what scammers do. They want you to get panicked and not think clearly. If you ever get a message like this anywhere in your email or on Etsy, and we'll look at that in a minute also, but you're going to be able to find the information in your shop dashboard. Don't click links in emails. Don't assume that this is right. There are enough kinds of signals here that you can usually figure out that it's wrong, but if they panic you, sometimes you overlook things, and that's just what they're counting on. They're counting on people overlooking things. This is future Cara talking. I did want to say that there is one time where Etsy will ask for your email, and that's if you contact them about something and they need to verify that it's actually

the owner of the account that they're talking to on the chat. They will ask for your email to verify that, and they might ask for some other information about your account, but they will not contact you directly in an email or a message and ask for your email. So, if you contact them through the official Etsy chat, then it's okay if they ask for that, but if someone contacts you just with no warning for no reason, don't hand that information out. Just wanted to add that the second one that we're going to be looking at is even worse than the first one. Okay, this one is more involved. This actually is on, I'm not sure if this was on Etsy on the app. It looks like it was from the app, and it says support chat. Okay, Etsy doesn't contact you with support chats. Okay, if they have something that they need to contact you with, it will be through a message in your inbox, and I'll again, I'll show you that in a minute. But this message says, Etsy customer service welcomes you with

with no punctuation. The customer has paid for the order, has paid for the delivery, to receive payment and complete the transaction. Click on the proceed to receiving button. There is no such button. Okay, this is something that someone has actually put in here. I don't know how they've done this. Scammers are very clever, and again, they're kind of counting on you being panicked or being so excited that you got an order. They do target newer shops more often, although not all the time. A lot of times, they'll target anybody, but they do target newer shops because you're not as familiar with the Etsy system, and you might fall for things, and they know that. The reason that they do this is because people do fall for it, and it's really sad because the reason that it continues is that people are clicking on these links, and they are answering the questions, and they're giving the emails, and then they're getting their financial information stolen because they're building trust with you, and you eventually will give them your bank.

account. I don't understand why, but this is what this message says: To receive payment and complete the transaction, click on the 'Proceed to Receiving' button. Enter the credit card details you wish to receive payment with. This is what they're looking for, okay? They want your financial information. All details are strictly confidential, and we are responsible for them. There's okay. This is clearly not written in a grammatically correct way. There's strange capitalizations. Etsy will never ask you to do this, so just be aware that if you get this kind of message, it is fake. The second part of this message, however, actually seems to show that there is a payment that is sitting there waiting, and it's waiting in payment status Receiving Funds. There is no such payment status on Etsy. There is payment status Paid. There is Not Paid. There is Processing, and there is no Receiving Funds payment status. This is something that this scammer has invented. And then you can see down here at the bottom, they have like a little question mark like it's a chat. That's not an Etsy chat, okay?

What they want you to do is to click on that button and give them your payment information. They clearly ask for your credit card. Bad idea. Don't do it. And you can see if this is legitimate by going to Etsy, and we'll do that next. I'll show you where to look for that, but this is not real. It looks very convincing if you're not familiar with the Etsy system. It looks very convincing, so it could fool people, and it probably does, and that's why they keep doing it. Now, I'm not sure if this is the same thing as the part of that first one that we were looking at, but this is another message that someone received, and I don't care about showing any of these details because these are all fake. Every single piece of this is fake. This is not a real order. It is not a real name. It's probably a fake address. They just make stuff up so that they can get your payment information and use your credit card. They want your credit card number.

now um this one gives an order number. It gives a date. This is odd because I'm not sure if Etsy formats dates this way. This is a European way of formatting dates. It's not us-based, so it could be the way that they do it. I don't think it is, and it could be the way they do it in different countries, possibly. So, I mean, this looks very legitimate except this link. And again, if you're new, you won't know this. This is not an Etsy link. Um, it's just there's something weird about it. It says, You must confirm the order and receive money using the unique link with 2ks above. There's your clue right there. And I've heard that scammers, the reason that they do this kind of stuff, CU, they could have someone fix it. They could figure this stuff out. They put things in their scammy emails and scammy communications that are weird because they want to see if you'll overlook it. If they get someone to click on this who has clearly

seen all of these clues but is choosing to overlook them or if they just didn't notice then scammers are like hey we got a live one and this person is willing to overlook this kind of stuff and to go ahead and confirm the order they're clicking on links so we're going to target them more never click a link if it's not in your shop dashboard and it comes from Etsy officially communicating okay um and it if there's misspellings like this and the thing is that sometimes Etsy misspells things but not like this okay the other clue here is that this message came in the Etsy messaging system but it comes through the customer portal and this is what I keep saying we're going to look at next and I am going to look at that one next it says Etsy is reaching out to you for the first time send a quick reply to show them your shop delivers top-notch service that tells me but it might not tell you because if you are new to this you don't know this tells me that this

is coming through the customer message system, not directly from an official Etsy message. Because if Etsy is saying Etsy is reaching out to you for the first time, then this is someone who has created an account somehow with the name Etsy, which I don't know how they do that, but you know scammers are going to scam. They figure out ways to get around these things. So, Etsy is reaching out to you for the first time, is not coming through the official Etsy message system in your messages. And let's look at that next. This is the section in the Etsy messages that shows you where messages came from and the folders that you're putting them into. Etsy recently has created a from Etsy section, which you can see right here. And they did that because of the crazy number of scam messages that had been pounding through the Etsy message system. And they're aware of it, and they post things in the shop and in the announcements in the forum saying, Don't click on links. We are not going to send you messages, that kind of anything.

but people don't read the announcements all the time in the forums, and you just get tricked. So, if you get a message like that and you're not sure about it, go over to your messages in your shop dashboard and see if it's in the from Etsy section. Because if it's not in that from Etsy folder, I was trying to think of the word, if it's not in that folder, then it didn't come from Etsy. And this one that we just looked at that said Etsy has reached out to you for the first time, that's probably going to be either in your inbox or in the order help requests. It's not going to be in the from Etsy section because that's not an official from Etsy message. So, if you see a message that says it's from Etsy but it is not in this folder, it's not from Etsy, and it's a scam, and you should report it to Etsy so that they're aware of it and they can ban that account. Because we do need to report these things to Etsy. They can get rid of the

accounts, but they don't know about it until we tell them that we're getting these messages. But this from Etsy is the one way that you can tell if that's an actual official Etsy message. Now, one thing to take notice of is that on the app, it doesn't show those folders. All right, so check on the dashboard on a computer. You use a PC or a Mac. You don't want to look only on the app because all the app does is show you the messages. It doesn't show you those folders. This is something that shows up on desktop on a computer. Don't use the Etsy app if you're checking this kind of thing out. You want to be able to go in and see the full deal, not just what the app shows you. And the app always shows you an abbreviated version of your whole shop. So make sure that you're checking on a computer and not the app because it's easier to get fooled on the app. The other way that you can tell is go to your shop dashboard and go into the

actual section, so if you get a message that says Etsy needs all your financial information to be updated, send us your money. Um, you know, don't do that, but go into your shop dashboard, into the finances section, and go in there. Go into your personal profile and look at your payment information. Go into the shop dashboard, look at your banking account information. If there are no notices or any kind of announcement there that says they need an update, then they don't need an update. This last message that comes from supposedly Etsy says, Hello, my name is Adam, and I'm a member of the Etsy support team. Now, when a member of the Etsy support team sends you anything, it's going to have a different-looking picture on it, but it's not going to have an Etsy logo, and it will have different notifications on it. You can see what these look like if you go to that from Etsy folder and look in there to see what their pictures look like. It's not this. All right, we received a call from one of our users who is

Having trouble placing an order on your shop now, and they give you specifics. And this is what scammers do; this is what marketers do. They give you specifics because when you give people specifics, things seem more believable. When people say, I made X number of dollars, they give you a very specific dollar amount because it seems more believable than just saying a million dollars, right? So, they're giving you the name, which is a fake name. I have no problem showing this; this is a fake name. And this is the kind of thing where they want you to panic. They want you to go over to your orders and start searching for it. I can't find anything. What should I do? And then you click on the link here to talk to the person who sent you the message. That's what they want you to do. But this is not a real message. This isn't a real official Etsy contributor. There is no official Etsy contributor. All right, if someone says they're an official Etsy contributor, that means nothing. This is not an official Etsy

message. And again, if it's not in that from Etsy folder in your messages, then it's fake. So please don't fall for these things. It's very upsetting to me and most people when we hear about people who got ripped off. When you're dealing with scammers, you need to be careful. When you get messages from Etsy that tell you to click on a link, you need to be careful. But Etsy does not send you anything that asks for your email. It doesn't send you things that say this order is being processed and we need you to do this. They will send you messages that say the order is being processed just to let you know that it will show up, but you shouldn't ship it until the payment goes through. They never ask you to do anything in that case, so don't think that you need to go in and click anything. You don't need to provide any information to Etsy. They handle all of that information without you having to do anything about the payments. So don't get scammed. Leave any

questions. Give this video a thumbs up, and I will talk to you later.

Don't fall for these Etsy message scams: With examples of what they look like!

Kara Buntin Tutorials

Scammers are impersonating Etsy by sending messages that request personal information, claiming to need it for order confirmation or customer payment issues.

These messages have become more aggressive and prevalent in recent months, causing concern among users.

Common signs of a scam include the use of the Etsy logo, unusual language, and suspicious requests for personal information.

Etsy does not need your email address and all communication comes through your Etsy dashboard.

Scammers often use common phrases like "regards" and "dear" to create a sense of urgency and panic.

The only time Etsy may ask for your email is if you contact them for verification, not the other way around.

Scammers are targeting new shop owners on Etsy with fake messages about receiving payment and completing transactions.

These messages often request sensitive financial information, such as credit card details, and create a sense of urgency.

Common red flags include unusual capitalization, non-existent payment statuses, and fake chat options, making it crucial to verify any suspicious messages directly through Etsy.

The message contains an unusual date format and a non-Etsy link, raising suspicions of a scam.

Scammers often use odd wording and request confirmation through unique links to target potential victims.

Etsy has created a "from Etsy" section in messages to combat the increase in scam communications, advising users not to click on suspicious links.

To determine if a message is genuinely from Etsy, check the "from Etsy" folder in your shop dashboard; if it's not there, it's a scam.

The Etsy app does not show these folders, so it's important to use a computer for a full view.

If you receive a message requesting financial information or an update, verify it by checking the finances section in your shop dashboard; if there are no notices, the request is likely fraudulent.

Scammers use specific details to make their messages seem more believable, often creating fake names and urgent situations.

They aim to prompt you to click on links and provide personal information, claiming to be official Etsy contributors.

Etsy will never ask for your email or personal information, so it's important to be cautious and not fall for these scams.