OLX

Is OLX safe?

The platform is a real classifieds service, but it is one of the riskiest places we score for scams. Most OLX deals still run directly between strangers, and scammers have learned to copy the very safety features OLX built against them. In Poland, OLX's name was used in 28,462 phishing incidents logged by CERT Polska in 2025, more than any other brand it named. In Brazil, OLX's own data says fake payment receipts were the most common online purchase fraud. Poland's consumer authority also fined OLX PLN 28 million in 2025. We score it 43/100, below Kleinanzeigen (53) and Vinted (51).

One name covers several companies. OLX Group, owned by Prosus and based in Amsterdam, runs 11 brands including OLX in Poland, Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine. The Brazilian app is published by Bom Negócio Atividades de Internet in Rio de Janeiro, and the Indian app by Sobek Auto India. We give the brand one score because the scam patterns repeat from country to country, but payment protection and data practices differ between the companies, as the labels below show.

The fake OLX payment link

In Poland the typical scam targets sellers. A "buyer" agrees at once, says they have paid with OLX delivery, and sends a link by WhatsApp, SMS or email. The page looks like OLX and asks for card details or a bank login to "collect" the payment. The money then leaves the seller's account instead.

The scale is large and growing. CERT Polska, the national computer emergency team, logged 78,391 phishing incidents in 2025, and OLX's name was used in 28,462 of them, more than Allegro (22,513). A year earlier the count was 9,865 out of 40,120. It added 28,562 fake OLX domains to its warning list in 2025, up from 9,714 in 2024 and 4,564 in 2023; only fake investment sites had more. A 2023 campaign even offered "compensation" for OLX and Vinted fraud through a fake government page.

The real OLX checkout never needs a seller's card details. If a payment link comes from the other person, treat it as phishing.

Fake receipts in Brazil, fake soldiers in India

Brazil's version targets sellers too. The buyer sends a fake Pix or transfer receipt and asks for the item straight away. An OLX survey reported by Canaltech in August 2025 found that fake payment scams made up 46% of online purchase fraud in 2024, with estimated losses of R$1.61 billion. OLX's advice is simple: hand over nothing until the money shows in your own account, or use Garantia OLX, which holds the payment until the buyer receives the item as described.

In India, the best-documented pattern targets buyers. In 2020 Tamil Nadu police traced a nationwide OLX scam to about 10 villages in Rajasthan, where fraudsters posed as army personnel selling cars, motorbikes and phones because of a "transfer", and took advance payments for vehicles that did not exist. Fourteen complaints in Chennai alone led to the raid.

What UOKiK found

Poland's Office of Competition and Consumer Protection fined Grupa OLX PLN 28,420,869 on 12 June 2025. From November 2020 to 31 July 2024, the people OLX called "buyers" when rating a seller included anyone who had only asked a question or viewed a phone number. The algorithm also weighted positive ratings more than negative ones and showed scores below the middle of the scale as positive, so a seller with more bad ratings than good could be shown as "nieźle" (not bad). OLX has since switched to star ratings from people who bought and received an item through Przesyłka OLX. The decision is not final.

It was not the first. In 2024 UOKiK obliged OLX to change how it sold its buyer protection package, to tell users that Przesyłka OLX shipping and its service fee can be skipped, and to include extra fees when sorting offers by lowest price. A separate case over misleading answers OLX gave UOKiK is still open.

What the app tracks

The Brazilian and Polish App Store labels both list eight types of data as used to track you across other companies' apps: purchases, location, contact info, user content, search history, identifiers, usage data and diagnostics. Precise location, phone number, email and photos are linked to you on both, and the Brazilian label adds messages. That is more tracking than Kleinanzeigen declares. The Indian app lists location, identifiers and usage data for tracking.

How to use OLX safely

1. Never open a payment or delivery link sent by the other person. Check the transaction inside the OLX app.
2. Never type card details, a bank login or a UPI PIN to receive money.
3. For shipped items, use Garantia OLX or Przesyłka OLX from inside the app; it is the only route with buyer protection.
4. For cash or Pix sales, wait until the money is visible in your own banking app.
5. Meet in a busy public place for pick-ups, and be wary of buyers who cannot meet and insist on an urgent deal.

How we scored it

Scams and harmful content (33) is the weakest factor, driven by CERT Polska's phishing counts, Brazil's fake receipt losses and Indian police cases. Privacy (35) reflects the broad tracking on the Brazilian and Polish labels. The regulatory record (55) counts the PLN 28 million UOKiK fine, which is not final, and the 2024 decision.