PAP alerts on the rise in scam attempts to rent student accommodation

A cyclical influx of rental announcements and in proportion, an increase in scam attempts ...

In this particularly dynamic period in the rental market, PAP teams deal, on average, every day:

• Between 800 and 1.000 new rental announcements;
• Between 200 and 300 new advertisements are subject to an in-depth control by the Control Unit of PAP *, because they come from owners not identified at PAP, leading to the request for supporting documents such as a title deed;
• Between 40 and 50 new advertisements are blocked by the PAP Control service and are never broadcast on the site, ie more than double what was observed in previous years.

In a context where students constitute an important part of research ...

For a little over two months, students have represented 39% of all rental searches on PAP.fr against 30% in June and 18% in May.

What type of scam?

There are two main types of rental scams:

• The crooks attempt to obtain money fraudulently;
• The crooks try to recover the parts of a rental file to set up fake consumer credit files.

How to protect yourself from this?

1. Never send money and / or documents from your file before having visited the accommodation.
2. Never send money to Western Union or equivalent accounts.

The means implemented by PAP to fight against scams ...

Too often scammers play on the lack of knowledge that student tenants have in terms of rental to ask them to block or reserve the accommodation before even having visited and also take advantage of periods when demand is high to play on the fear of missing a lodging. This is why PAP sets up multiple precise control points upstream:

1st step: control by algorithms

• Automated control by identifying key words, technical solutions that allow us to cross / cross-check information (We cannot give details of these solutions, this would amount to giving the user manual to fraudsters.
• Crossing with our control database (CNIL approved) which excludes advertisements from people identified as crooks. NB: Before placing a suspicious advertiser on the blacklist, we communicate with him to formally characterize his bad faith. This list is not communicated to anyone, and only a few people have access to it at PAP. Only incidents with a certain and predetermined severity are subject to blacklisting.

Systematic step 2: human control

• Systematic proofreading of all announcements made by experienced collaborators. At PAP, the people in control have on average at least 2/3 years of experience. PAP does not entrust this control to juniors. Any doubt generates a thorough check.
• Verification of personal information (email, address, etc.), verification of photos and description of the property to assess the consistency of the proposal, the elements transmitted. The accustomed eye of a control expert identifies inconsistencies that an ordinary reader does not see. In addition, we often find the same inconsistencies in fraudulent ads, experience allows them to be identified quickly.
• Systematic call from any new advertiser prior to validation. Request for documents attesting to the ownership (title deed, property tax) and the identity of the owner.
• Why PAP does not use a scoring system with specialized solutions (what all the other sites do): after study and several operational tests, it appears that these solutions are significantly less efficient than human control.

During publication

• User report: tenants can contact us if they have any doubts about an advertisement or following an exchange with an advertiser:
  • Via the site;
  • By phone, customer service available 6 days a week.
• If in doubt : all reports are taken seriously and are subject to immediate review by an advisor.

In the event of a proven scam while the ad has been published

• How is PAP handling the situation?
  • The announcement is immediately canceled;
  • Immediately, all the people who responded to the ad and whose contact details are available are contacted again, ideally by phone or, failing that, by email.
  • Thanks to the responsiveness of the dedicated team (Control Department), these actions are systematically undertaken immediately with a waiting period of less than one hour.