CarBluff Scan

Check a used-car listing for scam risk before you message the seller. The scam check is free, unlimited and needs no account. Open a car listing on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, OfferUp, AutoTrader or Cars.com, click CarBluff, and it scores that listing from 0 to 100 for scam safety. Then it lists the most serious red flags it found in plain words, and where the ad says it, it quotes the exact words. What it checks for: - Requests for gift cards, a wire transfer or crypto - Money before you see the car, like a deposit "to hold it" - Escrow or "buyer protection" stories, and offers to ship the car to you - A seller who will not let you see, test drive or independently inspect the car - Pushing the conversation off the app - A salvage or rebuilt title, no title in hand, or a loan still owed on the car - A seller who tells you not to run the VIN - A price far below what similar cars sell for, with nothing in the ad to explain it - A deposit or down payment dressed up as the full price - The same car listed in several cities, and more How it works, and exactly what it sends: - Nothing is scored until you click. There is no background scoring and no feed monitoring. - Scoring happens in your browser. The listing's title, price, description and location are read from the one page you are on and scored on your device. The scan never uploads the description, the title or the listing link. - Every scan makes one quick call to carbluff.com to check that the scanner has not been turned off for safety. No listing content goes with it. - Some scans make one more call. A price far under what the same car really sells for is the strongest scam tell on Marketplace, and your browser cannot know the market on its own. So when a listing names a specific car with a year, an odometer reading and an asking price, and nothing in the ad explains a low price, the extension sends five things to carbluff.com: the year, make, model, mileage and asking price. The model can carry up to three more words from right after the model name in the title (for example "Camry SE" or "3 sedan"), so the car is matched more exactly. Nothing else from the ad, and no account, login or cookie, goes with them. One word comes back saying whether that car is priced far under the market, under it, or neither, and that word feeds the score your browser is already computing. No price, range or average ever comes back. - If the ad already explains its price (a rebuilt title, a car that does not run, damage the seller disclosed, very high mileage), or there is not enough to compare (no odometer, no asking price, no identifiable car), that call is never made. Your browser decides before anything is sent. - If that call fails, times out or is blocked, the scan finishes and scores exactly as it would have without it. That can cost a missed warning, never an invented one. - The only time the listing's description leaves your device is if you choose to report a result you think is wrong: press "Report this scan", then Send. That sends your note, the listing title and link, the price, year and mileage it read, the score, and the short phrases that tripped each flag (phone numbers and email addresses removed first) to CarBluff support. Facebook keeps some listings behind a login, so a link check on carbluff.com cannot always open them. The extension reads the page you already have open, so on Facebook it is the one-click way to check a car. If you sign in on carbluff.com (optional), the extension picks up that sign-in so two buttons work from the listing page, and each one sends data only when you press it. "Get the Deal Score" (CarBluff Lifetime and comped accounts) sends the car's year, make, model, mileage, asking price, VIN and ZIP to carbluff.com to price it against real market listings. "Save to Garage" sends the listing's title, link, location, price and free scam score to your own CarBluff Garage. Your sign-in token only ever goes back to carbluff.com. Want to know if it is a good buy, not just whether it is safe? The scam check stays free forever. The Full Report is the paid layer: a Deal Score against real market listings, a condition read, and an overall buy-or-walk verdict. Open the car on carbluff.com from the result and unlock its Full Report there with a one-time credit. Credits never expire, and nothing on CarBluff is a subscription. The extension itself sells nothing. The optional on-listing panel (on by default): - When you open a car listing on a supported site, CarBluff reads that page's visible text as it loads, in your browser, to tell whether it is a car listing. If it is, a small CarBluff panel offers a free scan and the toolbar icon lights up. That check sends nothing and scores nothing. - The panel is labelled as the CarBluff extension and says it is not affiliated with the site you are on. Drag it anywhere. Close it on a listing and it stays closed there; that listing's identifier is the only thing it keeps. - Two switches in Settings turn off the panel and the toolbar highlight. With both off, the extension does nothing until you open it yourself. What it does not do: it does not read your feed, other listings, your messages, your contacts, your cookies, or any site's storage other than your own carbluff.com sign-in. It has no ads and no analytics.