How to Avoid Google Voice Scams When Selling Online

Criminals pretending to be legitimate buyers can use you to scam others

Ken Budd,

AARP

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En español

Published August 13, 2024

a criminal with a speech bubble mentioning a google voice code

Illustration: Chris Gash

Roughly 250 million sellers around the world hawk their stuff on Facebook Marketplace, and many have reported a seemingly legitimate yet suspicious interaction. Imagine you’re selling a treadmill or your vintage Star Wars action figures. Someone expresses interest, but they claim that they’re concerned about fraud and want to confirm your identity. So the self-described buyer — who has found your number, or asked for it — arranges for you to receive a six-digit verification code from Google, and then asks you to text the code or recite it over the phone.

That’s when you might get suspicious — and with good reason. When you provide that code, you become the unwitting victim of a Google Voice scam.

Unlike most scams, the goal of a Google Voice scam isn’t to steal your money. It’s to get a new phone number to perpetrate more fraud.

The scammer starts by using your cell or landline number to set up an account with Google Voice, an online phone service for making calls, getting voicemails, and receiving and sending texts. Creating an account involves a verification process. Because the scammer is using your number, the verification code is sent to your phone. Once you reveal the code’s six numbers, the scammer can finish creating the account and use that Google Voice number as a disguise to conduct other types of scams.

“When you provide that code, the scammers are off to the races,” says Steve Weisman, an attorney and fraud authority who reports on scams for his website, scamicide.com. “Scammers want to hide their tracks. If the phone number can be traced back, it wouldn’t be traced back to them. It’d be traced back to the innocent victim who gave that six-digit code.”

A widespread problem

The Federal Trade Commission first issued an alert about this phone fraud in 2021, but the Google Voice scam has persisted. It’s still the number one scam reported to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), noted the organization in a June 2024 report. In 2023, 60 percent of scams reported to the ITRC were Google Voice scams.

The give-me-your-code ploy occurs not just on Facebook Marketplace but on Craigslist and other online market sites. And sellers of merchandise aren’t the only targets. Criminals have sent verification codes to people inquiring about apartment rentals or searching for lost pets (the scammers might, for example, claim they’re verifying your identity as the pet’s owner). The scam has even appeared on dating apps.

In some cases, the buyer and seller roles are reversed, the ITRC reports. Criminals create an online post or advertisement. When people express interest about buying an item or maybe renting a room, the fake sellers use the same fraudulent schtick: They need a verification code, they say, to prove the buyers are real.

What makes this scam so effective is the manipulation involved. The scammers present themselves as innocent people who are worried about being scammed. Since most of us guard against identity theft and online rip-offs, the authentication requests seem reasonable.

“They’re flipping the script a bit and saying, ‘Hey, I need you to prove that you’re legitimate,’ ” says Mona Terry, chief victims officer for the ITRC. “And people feel, like, of course I’m legitimate, so I’m happy to share this information with you.”

“The good news is that scammers can’t use this to get into your computer or steal your identity,” Weisman says. “The bad news is that you become a tool to scam others.”

How to avoid Google Voice scams

Investigate the buyer. If you’re selling items on an online marketplace, check out the profiles of potential buyers. “If it’s a newly created profile, if there aren’t many pictures, those are red flags,” says Terry, because they’re signs that a profile was hastily created. Sometimes scammers will copy images from other profiles and put them on their own page, she adds. If you’re suspicious, you can conduct a reverse image search. You can also investigate a buyer on Google or other search engines and even ask for references.

Never share a code. “Don’t share your verification code with anyone,” Google states on its Google Voice support site, adding that Google employees “will never ask for this code.” And don’t enter a code on calls or texts from Google unless you initiated the process. “A hallmark of any scam is they’re asking for information they really shouldn’t have access to,” says Terry. “When someone you don’t know or don’t usually do business with asks for a code, that’s a key indicator that it’s a scam.”

If you do share a code with someone:

Change your Google password. The Google Voice scam will not result in identity theft, Weisman says, but creating a new password and enabling two-factor authentication on another device is still a good idea. You don’t want to risk the possibility that criminals can access your Google account and services such as Gmail and Google Photos.

Disconnect the number. If you’re not a Google Voice user but you gave someone a verification code, you can disconnect the number. Go to voice.google.com/regain and enter the number you want removed. If you use Google Voice and want to reclaim the number, you’ll find instructions at support.google.com (click on “Google Voice,” then click on “Google Voice numbers” for a menu that includes “Reclaim your Voice number”).

Report the fraud. Report scams to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at ic3.gov.

For support and guidance, the trained fraud specialists and volunteers at the free AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline (877-908-3360) can share information on what to do next and how to avoid future scams. The AARP Fraud Watch Network also offers online group support sessions.

Read this story for more on scams perpetrated on Facebook Marketplace.

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Ken Budd has written for National Geographic Traveler, Travel+Leisure, The Washington Post Magazine and many more. He is the author of a memoir, The Voluntourist.