You are being targeted, and it is not because you were careless.

Why does this happen to internationals specifically?

Because the fraud is designed around the constraints you arrive with. A local student can visit the flat on Saturday, ask a friend who lives on that street, and walk away from a bad deal because they already have a bed. You often have none of those options, and a scammer's entire pitch is built to exploit that gap.

The pressure is real, so the answer is not "be more careful" — it is to replace the checks you cannot do in person with checks you can do from anywhere. That is a short list, and it works.

• You are booking sight-unseen, which removes the single most reliable test there is.
• You are on an academic deadline, which makes urgency feel normal rather than suspicious.
• You may not read Dutch, so contract terms and official pages are harder to sanity-check.
• Your parents are often paying, from another country, with a payment method that cannot be recalled.

What to verify before you pay, from anywhere in the world

In order of how much each one tells you per minute spent. The first four are free and take under ten minutes together.

None of this is a guarantee, and we will not pretend otherwise. Our check reports risk signals; a clean result means our checks found nothing, not that the advert is genuine. What the list does is remove the specific routes by which deposits are actually lost — which is a smaller claim, and a true one.

The messages that should stop you

Fraudulent listings converge on the same script, because the script works. You do not need to recognise every variant — any two of these together is enough to stop and verify before replying further.

• A deposit or first month is required before any viewing, to "reserve" the room.
• The landlord is abroad and cannot show the property, but will courier the keys.
• The conversation is moved off the platform to WhatsApp or Telegram immediately.
• Payment is requested by a method that cannot be reversed, or to an account in another country.
• Your passport, BSN or bank details are wanted before you have seen anything or signed anything.
• The rent is far below what everyone else in that city is asking, and there is a reason why you specifically got lucky.

What if I have already paid?

Act in the next hour rather than the next day, because that is what determines whether recovery is possible at all. Then report it — not because it will get your money back, but because unreported fraud is the reason the numbers universities are shown stay too low to act on.

• Call your bank immediately and ask for a recall of the transfer. Say the word fraud.
• Report to the police (politie.nl) and to the Fraudehelpdesk. Keep every message, advert screenshot and receipt.
• Tell your university's international office and your student union — they track this and they can warn the next intake.
• Do not send more money to "release" the first payment. That is the second half of the same script.

For international offices, ESN chapters and student unions

The listing check is free, needs no account, and works in English and Dutch. If it is useful to your students, link it — no partnership, no agreement and no fee is required for that, and we would rather your students use it than that we own the relationship.

If you want something more structured — a session during introduction week, a checklist for your housing pages, or a duty-of-care arrangement for the students you place — the partners page has the details.