NOS
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Information from the NOS•nowadays, 17:58
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Nina Jansen and Emma Brink
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Nina Jansen and Emma Brink
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“I missing 1620 euros and I even now really don’t have a space,” says university student Ernst-Jan. He thought he was shelling out the rent for his new university student place, but he was scammed. Shortly ahead of the begin of the educational year, he is even now homeless.
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It transpires to additional pupils. The Countrywide Pupil Union (LSvB) is worried about this. “In new yrs, the shortage in the housing sector has amplified and the variety of learners has grown. Frequently they are still determined for a room just in advance of the get started of the tutorial yr and are more probably to fall between the scammers,” he suggests. president Joram van Velzen.
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“It is pretty complicated to discover a space. At initial I was only replying to the rooms I actually needed on Facebook, but after a month I nevertheless had very little and I began replying to everything,” claims Ernst-Jan. There are presently about 26,500 pupil rooms far too handful of in the Netherlands. If almost nothing is finished about it, this will improve to 60,000 rooms by 2030, the Kences knowledge middle calculated.
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Hundreds of learners explain to NOS Stories that they have been in get in touch with with a scammer. NOS Stories also spoke to various individuals who have been cheated. It is not known how quite a few pupils this essentially occurs to.
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NOS Stories spoke to scammed pupils and discovered out who is hiding driving the scammers’ Facebook profiles.
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Lots of pupils search for a space in Fb teams these as “Kamers in Utrecht” or “Housing Eindhoven”. Directors of dozens of this kind of groups convey to NOS Tales that they see pretend ads every day. They say they try to clear away as quite a few scammers as attainable, but this would seem to get extra and far more complicated, for instance for the reason that the language (English) in the adverts is getting superior. In some Facebook groups there is no moderation and anyone can submit nearly anything.
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“I felt the strain to transfer money”
Ernst-Jan also observed it difficult to realize the ad as pretend. “It was just extremely genuine. The scammer sent me a picture of him, his ID card and I acquired a contract with all types of facts. I also felt the force, since he reported that 40 other folks had responded. Here it is. because I immediately transferred the money. “
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Fang Cheung has viewed so lots of ripoffs go by means of that he has gotten a Facebook group commenced warning residence seekers. Listed here are some recommendations against scams and hyperlinks from Facebook accounts trying to scam folks. “In every team, an ordinary of ten pretend profiles are found out each working day,” claims Cheung. “Anybody hunting for a residence comes into make contact with with a scammer.”
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In accordance to the LSvB, international college students are even far more probable to tumble target to it. For instance, because they will not have the option to see a property from their possess nation and are much less familiar with how the Dutch residence industry will work.
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500 Facebook profiles
About 500 Fb profiles of scammers have previously been posted on Cheung’s web page. She also noted it to Fb itself. Even so, according to her, the platform removes incredibly few of these profiles.
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A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s father or mother corporation, mentioned scams violate dwelling guidelines and that Fb uses “a combination of specifically educated teams and automated detection tools” to detect scams and take away accounts.
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