Vinted

Is Vinted safe?

For buying and selling second-hand clothes, mostly yes, with one condition: keep the whole deal inside Vinted's checkout. When you press "Buy now", Vinted holds the money until you confirm the parcel arrived and matches the listing, and you can claim a refund within 2 days of delivery. Almost every way people lose money on Vinted involves leaving that system: a link in the chat, a "payment confirmation" email or a seller who prefers bank transfer.

The company's record is more mixed. Lithuania's data protection authority fined it €2,385,276 in July 2024, consumer watchdogs in Italy and Poland fined it in 2022, and French officials complained to the media regulator in 2025 about adult content reaching minors. We score it 51/100.

The scam that hits sellers: fake payment pages

The commonest Vinted fraud targets sellers, not buyers. Someone "buys" your item, then asks in the chat for your email address or phone number. Shortly after, a message arrives that looks like Vinted, saying the payment is waiting and you need to click a link to "verify" or "receive" it. The page asks for your card details, and sometimes a bank login. In March 2026 Austria's Sparkasse banks named Vinted first in a warning about exactly this pattern: newly registered sellers are moved from the chat to email or WhatsApp, then sent to a fake "sales processing" page claiming their bank account must be "verified".

Vinted's own app shows a warning in the chat: "Vinted will never ask for extra information via chat", and sharing emails, phone numbers or financial details "can leave you open to scams". That is the rule to remember. Money from a sale lands in your Vinted balance automatically after the buyer confirms. Vinted never needs your card number to pay you.

Buyers meet the mirror image: a seller who suggests paying by bank transfer or PayPal "friends and family" to save the buyer protection fee. If you agree, Vinted's refund policy no longer applies, as its checkout warning says.

This is not a Vinted-only problem. UK Finance, the banking trade body, reported record losses to purchase scams in 2025 and said this fraud often starts on marketplace sites. It asked marketplaces to stop sellers taking separate bank transfers off the platform.

What Vinted knows about you

The App Store label, filed by Vinted Limited, lists usage data as "used to track you" across apps and websites owned by other companies, and advertising and usage data for third-party advertising. Data linked to you includes purchase history, name, address, email and phone number, photos, search history, user and device IDs and diagnostics. There is no location or payment card data in the label, which makes it lighter than eBay or Amazon.

Selling brings extra checks. Under EU tax reporting rules Vinted asks sellers above certain thresholds for identity and tax details, and its identity verification asks for documents. That is legally required, but it means a Vinted account can hold an ID scan as well as your address.

The GDPR fine and "shadow blocking"

The fine came out of complaints that French and Polish users made in 2021 and 2022. Leading the case for the EU regulators, Lithuania's State Data Protection Inspectorate found that Vinted:

• refused some requests to erase personal data without a valid basis and did not explain clearly what it kept and why;
• used "shadow blocking", quietly limiting users it suspected of breaking its rules without telling them, with no lawful basis;
• could not show that it had properly answered one request for access to data.

The penalty, €2,385,276, was decided on 2 July 2024 under the EU's one-stop-shop procedure, with the regulators of France, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and Spain as concerned authorities. In May 2025 Lithuania's Regional Administrative Court dismissed Vinted's appeal against the underlying findings, saying the regulator "acted within its competence". Vinted's appeal against the fine itself was on hold until that ruling became final. The company says the case has nothing to do with account security and that it no longer uses the blocking measures.

Fees, refunds and consumer rules

Consumer regulators have looked mainly at how Vinted presents money. Poland's UOKiK fined it PLN 5.3 million (about €1.14 million) in May 2022, saying it explained identity checks too late, after sellers had already earned money, and did not explain how to buy without the paid buyer protection. Vinted appealed, and in 2023 a Polish court cut the fine to PLN 1.12 million, overturning the part about fees but upholding the part about excessive requests for personal data. The case then went to a higher court. Italy's competition authority fined Vinted €1.5 million in November 2022 for not making clear that buyers pay a commission and shipping on top of the advertised price. Vinted paid and appealed.

A wider EU dialogue, led by Lithuania's consumer authority, ended in June 2024. Vinted agreed to show the buyer protection fee in the total price, drop ads suggesting buying was free, and explain refunds, counterfeit checks and its review system more clearly. It refused to show delivery costs at the start of a purchase, and the authorities said they might enforce.

Children and adult content

Vinted says users must be at least 18 and checks a date of birth when you set up payments. The App Store still rates the app 4+. In November 2025, after French media reported that some lingerie and swimwear listings were used to steer users to paid adult content on other sites, France's High Commissioner for Childhood, Sarah El Haïry, referred Vinted to the regulator Arcom. Vinted says it has zero tolerance for sexual solicitation and removes such content. Parents should treat Vinted as an adult marketplace with an open chat.

How to use Vinted safely

1. Pay only with "Buy now" in the app. Never pay by bank transfer, PayPal or a link from the chat.
2. Never give a buyer your email address or phone number. A real sale needs neither.
3. Check that any page asking for card details is on the Vinted app or the vinted domain for your country.
4. Open the parcel on video if the item is valuable, and report problems within 2 days of delivery.
5. Turn on 2-step verification in your account's security settings.

How we scored it

Security (58) is Vinted's best factor because the in-app escrow works and we found no breach of accounts, though login protection is only a 4-digit code. Transparency and control and the regulatory record sit at 45: the GDPRGDPRThe EU's General Data Protection Regulation, which sets rules on how organisations collect and use personal data and allows large fines.More in the glossary fine was about ignored deletion requests and hidden blocking, and three countries have fined Vinted. Scams and harmful content (48) is low because escrow is the default but phishing in the chat is common. Kleinanzeigen, where most deals still happen off-platform, scores 53.