Proptech Startup Showdigs Releases Anti-Rent Scam Product

It isn’t all that often a company comes up with a new and different offering for commercial real estate. But Showdigs seems to have managed it.

The proptech startup has announced a new type of property security offering called Listing Shield. “The new tool, available to residential property managers nationwide, detects and removes fraudulent rental property listings from marketplace sites like Craigslist and Facebook,” a press release says. “The scam monitoring is amplified by an additional layer of protection that uses AI to validate government IDs and then matches facial structure to the age of the lead requesting a tour — ensuring scammers can’t get access to rental properties in the first place.”

Online rental scams are a scourge on the property rental industry and one going back to at least 2010, according to the FBI. “The scammer duplicates postings from legitimate real estate sites, alters them, and reposts them. Often, the scammers use the broker’s real name to create a fake e-mail address, which gives the fraud more legitimacy. When the victim sends an e-mail through the website inquiring about the home, they receive a response from someone claiming to be the owner.” The scammer claims to be renting a property from a remote location and asks renters to send payment to them, only to steal the money and leave the renter without a place to live. The scam not only hurts the individuals but legitimate property owners by stealing their commercial identity.

“Nationwide, in 2021, 11,578 people reported losing $350,328,166 due to these types of scams which is a 64% increase from the previous year,” the FBI reported in 2022.

Listing Shield monitors online marketplaces for faked listings. “The platform uses a combination of algorithms and human reviewers to detect and remove fraudulent listings as quickly as possible,” the company’s website said. “Showdigs’ team of reviewers uses a combination of tools to check the authenticity of listings, including reverse image searches and IP tracking.”

The software then validates government IDs and then “matches facial structure to the age of the lead requesting a tour.”

After detecting a fraudulent listing, the software creates a report for the property manager with information about the scammer and directions of how to report the listing.

Listing Shield integrates with the other property management tools Showdigs has. One potential limitation for property managers is that the software focuses on single-family offerings.