.Wanted to put this out there because it's been a pretty big lesson for me, and I'm out £750.
I found an Internet seller who was an elderly woman who was looking to get rid of her iPhone X for a very small price - £750. Her story was that it was just too finicky and she was happier with her older phone so she wanted to get rid of it. I took most of the common precautionary measures - made sure the phone wasn't stolen, talked to her at length about why she was selling the phone for so cheap, etc. I consider myself pretty intelligent and intuitive, and I didn't have a bad feeling about this person.
Although this was not Ebay (it was another e-commerce site) she suggested we use PayPal for the transaction. "Great!" I thought, since I know PayPal has plenty of protection on items purchased using their service.
I'll skip to the end of the story - she scammed me.
So I contacted PayPal and learned that this is a common, VERY common scam where people can make Hundreds of thousands a day (PayPal reps words). Payment was through Friends and Family on her request.
I suppose the point of this story is this - don't think of PayPal as a safe transaction service, necessarily. Maybe a lot of you know this, but I didn't - criminals love to use PayPal, and I'm absolutely shocked that there aren't more safeguards in place (maybe a few more verification steps in setting up an account, or requiring a checking account be linked would help)
Read more: Cautionary Tale - Paypal scammed?