Guides
Rental fraud, answered first.
Sourced, practical guides for scam victims and property managers. Every guide opens with the direct answer.
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How common are vacation rental scams? What the data shows
What official fraud statistics and Bikoosh's own certificate-transparency data say about the scale of rental listing fraud - and why the true number is higher than any report shows.
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How to reverse-image-search a rental listing (step by step)
Exact steps for Google Lens, Google Images, and TinEye on phone and desktop, how to read the results for clone signs, and what a clean result does and doesn't prove.
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Is this Airbnb listing real? How to tell in five minutes
Fast Airbnb-specific checks - host history, off-platform payment tests, photo reverse-search, price sanity - plus what a cloned Airbnb listing looks like and a free automated checker.
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I paid a deposit for a rental that doesn't exist - what now?
The recovery sequence, in order of urgency - bank recall and chargeback windows, evidence to preserve, where to report (FTC, IC3, Action Fraud), and how to keep the same listing from catching others.
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Rental scam red flags - the 60-second checklist
The twelve strongest signals a vacation-rental or apartment listing is a scam, ranked by how reliably each one indicates fraud, with the reasoning behind each flag.
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Rental scams on Facebook Marketplace and groups - how to check a listing
Why cloned rental listings concentrate on Facebook, the checks that work inside a closed platform, how to verify with a screenshot, and what to do about a scam you've found.
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The same rental is listed on two sites - which one is real?
How to tell legitimate syndication from a cloned listing when identical photos appear on two sites - compare contact details, payment paths, and prices, and check both URLs free.
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A landlord asked for a deposit before a viewing - is it a scam?
Why paying before viewing is the defining move of advance-fee rental fraud, the scripts scammers use, what to do if you already paid, and how to check the listing itself.
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My house is listed for sale on a classifieds site - and I never listed it
The fake-sale variant of listing fraud - how scammers monetize your photos as a fictitious sale or long-term let, why classifieds boards are the venue, and the response playbook including police reporting.
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How rental listing cloning scams work
The anatomy of listing cloning - stolen photos, copied text, below-market pricing, urgency, off-platform payment - why it scales, and what actually shortens a clone's life.
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How to check if a vacation rental listing is real
Seven fast checks that defeat almost every cloned-listing scam - distinctive-sentence search, live video tour, payment-path rules, price sanity, address verification, and a free automated checker.
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How to report a fake vacation rental site
Exact reporting order for a fraudulent rental website - registrar and host abuse via RDAP, search de-indexing, safe-browsing flags, and government fraud reports with links.
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How property managers can monitor for stolen listings
The four detection channels that catch listing clones - photo fingerprinting, distinctive-text search, Certificate Transparency domain watching, classifieds diff-crawling - and how to run them manually or automatically.
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My property's photos are on a fake website - how do I remove them?
How to get stolen property photos taken off a fraudulent site - registrar and host abuse contacts via RDAP, DMCA notices under Section 512, search de-indexing, and escalation paths.
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Someone copied my Airbnb listing - what do I do?
Step-by-step response for hosts whose listing photos or description were copied to another site - evidence first, then platform reports and DMCA notices to registrar and host.
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Your listing was cloned - the complete takedown playbook
The end-to-end response when your rental listing is cloned - evidence capture, platform vs own-domain playbooks, DMCA notices, guest protection, and prevention that shortens the next clone's life.
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Why reverse-image search misses cloned rental photos
Mirroring, cropping, filtering, and re-encoding defeat file-matching search engines; perceptual hashes plus visual embeddings catch what they miss - with real calibration numbers.