I have tried to share with you all the ways you can protect yourself, your family, your home and your sanity as an online seller, but I have to admit, this is a situation that never crossed my mind until I read about it this morning, and when I read about this I rushed to share it with you.

“Chase” sells on Poshmark. He listed an item and a buyer, who we will call “Jerry” purchased the item on a Saturday afternoon. Like any good online seller, Chase planned on dropping off Jerrys order at the post office on Monday morning (most people know that USPS isn’t open on Sundays. In fact, our local USPS isn’t open on Saturdays either).

Simply waiting for the next business day to arrive wasn’t good enough for Jerry. On Sunday Jerry began posting messages on Chases Poshmark listings, asking when his order will ship. Chase figured the best solution was to print the postage, therefore Jerry will get the automatic email saying the order has shipped, and assumed that this would pacify Jerry. ….but it didn’t.

Jerry became enraged that the tracking number didn’t show any “scans”.

And this is where things get extra creepy:

Jerry uses the product image from Chases listing and performs a reverse image search. Because Chase had the same image posted on his personal Twitter account, Jerry was able to begin stalking Chase through Twitter.

Jerry begins sending Direct Messages through Twitter that say "Send my shit f*gg*t", "Are you there f*g?" and other homophobic slurs.

The harassment continued for several days, until the parcel arrived to Jerry. You would think that this would be the end of the story, but it’s not.

Jerry then slammed Chase with a 2-star review for “slow shipping” and poor “seller responsiveness”.

LESSON LEARNED:

Never, EVER, ever post your product images on your personal accounts. If you want to share an image of an item you own on your personal social media, be sure to take a fresh photo!