Barfus T.

First, they source their rentals from scam websites like Housesforrent.ws, which ONLY allows listings to be taken down by the person who posted the listing. So let's say someone posts a listing pretending to be the owner of, oh, I don't know, my parents' home. Despite flagging this rental on Oodle twice already, they still haven't removed it.

I believe that this website is probably owned by the same person who runs Housesforrent.ws and other fraudulent websites because Oodle lists these websites as sponsored. Their business model is probably to let people post whatever they want, increasing their web traffic (and therefore ad revenue) by drawing in unsuspecting saps. My parents complain that at least once every couple of days someone drives into their fairly private property. I feel much worse, though, for the poor sap that actually falls for these types of listings and websites.

Besides the usual methods (visiting the rental, etc), one way you can avoid these rental scams is to check if the contact/company's name on the listing matches the name given on the property's tax record. You can do that by going to the corresponding county tax assessor's office's website (search:______ county tax assessor). It's also a good negotiating tool if, given a legitimate listing, you think the rental price is too high.

The other, more important measure is to use privacy-oriented search engines like DuckDuckGo and stop using Google. I was only able to find out about this stupid website because one of the first rental inquirers managed to tell me about HousesforRent, which led me to Oodle. I imagine that the people who come across Oodle already have their searches biased based on their personal search history. Even after finding out the name of its equally stupid, affiliated website, it took me a long time to find it using Google because I don't have a history of searching for (shady) rentals. By using DuckDuckGo, you have a much better chance of avoiding these stupid, scam-driven websites altogether. (At the very least, if you're going to use Google, go incognito/private browsing and DON'T log into your email or Google account - your internet activity and searches will be tracked and you'll end up causing somebody to write a long review about a stupid website).