Wave of scams on Vinted: the platform claims to have "mastered" the problem

Europe 1 with AFP 18:22 p.m., March 24, 2023

Scams targeted some accounts of members of Vinted, the online sales platform for second-hand clothes, which assured AFP on Friday that the victims would be compensated and that it had now "mastered" the problem. "We have recently blocked access to the accounts of several of our members, due to an incident in which fraudulent access to these accounts was found," a spokesman for the Lithuanian company told AFP.

On Thursday, the newspaper Le Parisien had revealed that the electronic wallets of hundreds of users had been siphoned off by hackers, via a request to change contact details on Vinted, by SMS or phone call. "The login information used (logins, passwords, ...) were obtained from data consulted elsewhere outside the platform and not related to Vinted," the platform told AFP on Friday.

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Compensation for victims

"In addition, we can confirm that credit card details are not visible in full when accessing the account," she added. The victims "will be eligible for compensation in case of money lost on their Vinted wallet," she said without specifying the number of members affected or assessing the harm.

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Contacted by AFP, the platform was not able to indicate whether these were scams targeting members in France or around the world. Vinted, founded in 2008 in Lithuania, employs 1,500 people and its platform has more than 65 million users, according to figures from June 2022.