How CarGurus mitigates fraudulent private listings

At CarGurus, we are building the world's most trusted and transparent automotive marketplace.

Curious about the steps we take to protect you? The following are just a few of the measures we have implemented to keep our users safe and secure.

We use proprietary technology and innovative data analytics to create a machine learning algorithm that processes all our private party listings before they go live on our site. 

The algorithm developed by our engineers is looking for a variety of fraud indicators and patterns. When a vehicle is posted on our Sell My Car platform, our algorithm scans the information in the listing and determines whether:

1) The listing goes live on the site immediately.

2) The listing is paused for further verification until we receive proof of ownership from the car seller.

While the listing is hosted on our site, we are continually monitoring for potential fraud activity. Listings may also be randomly selected for proof of ownership at any time during the listing phase; even after a few weeks after the posting of the vehicle.

We require all our private party sellers to provide their VIN in order to communicate with shoppers like you. 

CarGurus now requires a valid VIN to be added before messaging between buyer and seller is enabled. This is to ensure transparency between the buyer and seller so that there is complete confidence when the transaction is made. We believe that this level of clarity will ultimately help you sell your vehicle!

Did this answer your question? Thanks for the feedback There was a problem submitting your feedback. Please try again later.