How to meet a stranger from a classified ad

MingList keeps your email off the page. It does not make the person on the other side of the deal safe, and it is not trying to. What follows is the part you control: where you meet, what you check before money changes hands, and the sentences that should end a conversation.

What MingList does, and what it leaves to you

Most safety advice on classifieds sites is vague because the site is unwilling to say what it actually does. Here is the split.

• We hide your email address. Every reply comes through a relay, so neither side ever sees the other's real address. How the relay works.
• We keep ads local. Ads are placed in a single city, and the site only accepts things handed over in person. That removes shipping, escrow and remote-payment scams by construction—not by moderation.
• Every ad has a Report button. Reports go to the site administrator, who reviews them and can remove an ad.
• We do not verify anyone. No ID checks, no background checks, no seller ratings. Posting needs a one-click Google sign-in and nothing else.
• We are never part of the payment. MingList does not hold money, guarantee a transaction, or referee a dispute.
• We are not an emergency service. There is no one on call. If you are in danger, call the police where you are, not us.

That last list is the reason this page exists. A site that verifies nobody has to be unusually clear about what the user is expected to do.

Before you meet

• Meet in daylight, in a place with other people. A café, a shop entrance, a bank lobby, a busy car park. Many police departments in the US, Canada and the UK run designated safe exchange zones—usually a marked bay in front of the station, sometimes under camera. Search your city plus "safe exchange zone" to see whether yours has one.
• Tell someone where you are going. Who you are meeting, where, and roughly when you expect to be back. This is the single cheapest precaution available and the one most often skipped.
• Bring someone if the item is expensive. Two people changes the arithmetic of a bad meeting.
• Settle the details in writing first. Price, condition, whether you can test it, whether the charger is included. A seller who refuses to answer specifics in the ad's reply thread is telling you something.
• Do not meet at your home for small items. For furniture that cannot be moved, bring it to the door or the lobby rather than inviting a stranger in.

At the meet

• Inspect before you pay. Not after, and not "while I get the cash out".
• Phones and laptops: power it on, make a call, check the battery health screen, confirm the storage size in settings, and ask the seller to sign out of their account in front of you. On an iPhone, check Settings for "Activation Lock"; on Android, confirm the device is not signed into a previous Google account. A device still tied to someone else's account can be bricked the moment they choose.
• Check the identifier. For phones, dial the IMEI code and compare it with the box and the ad. For bicycles, look for a frame number that has been filed off—that is a stolen bike.
• Do not get into a stranger's car, and do not let them into yours, even for a test drive. Meet at the vehicle, in public.
• Keep the item in your hands until the money is settled. Handing something over "to look at" and then discussing price is how items walk away.

Money

MingList never touches payment, so any request to route money through the platform is a lie by definition. Beyond that:

• Pay in person, when you have the item. Cash, or a transfer you can see land in your account before you let go of it. "I've sent it, it'll show up" is not payment.
• Never buy gift cards, and never accept them. Gift cards are the standard instrument of classifieds fraud because they are untraceable and irreversible. No legitimate deal on this site involves one.
• Refuse deposits for items you have not seen. A deposit to "hold" something is the most common way to lose money here. There is no reservation system on MingList.
• Watch for overpayment. A buyer "accidentally" sends too much and asks you to refund the difference by transfer or gift card. The original payment will be reversed; the refund will not.
• Treat cheques and money orders as slow. They can be withdrawn days after they appear to clear. If you accept one, do not release the item until your bank confirms the funds have actually settled—not merely that they are available.

The sentences that should end the conversation

• "I'm not in town—my cousin will collect it." MingList only works for things handed over in person, in the same city. A buyer who cannot be present is asking you to break the one rule that makes the site safe.
• "Send me the code you just got." That is a Google sign-in code. Handing it over hands over your account. Nobody needs it to buy a sofa.
• "What's your number? Let's talk on WhatsApp." You can, but understand the trade: the relay protects your email address, not a phone number you type out. Once it is in someone's contacts, it stays there. If you want to keep that separation, keep the conversation in the reply thread.
• "I'll pay extra if you hold it for me." There is nothing to hold it with—no deposit mechanism, no reservation. Extra money offered up front is the setup for the overpayment refund.
• "It's urgent, I need an answer in ten minutes." Urgency is the tool that stops you checking. Everything on this site can wait an hour.

If something goes wrong

• Report the ad. The button is on every listing. Include what happened; the administrator reads it.
• Keep the email thread. Replies arrive through the relay, so the record exists in your inbox. Do not delete it before you have decided what to do.
• If you are threatened, defrauded, or physically unsafe, contact the police where you are. Emergency numbers for the countries MingList operates in: 911 in the United States and Canada, 999 in the United Kingdom and Singapore, 000 in Australia. For non-emergencies, use your local police force's non-emergency line.
• Do not expect MingList to respond in an emergency. There is no on-call staff and no monitoring. Reporting an ad is a moderation action, not a distress signal.

Why this page cannot make the judgement for you

Everything above is a procedure, not a verdict. None of it tells you whether the person you are about to meet is honest, because nothing available to us would. We do not verify identities—that is a deliberate trade: verification would mean collecting the identity documents and personal data that this site exists to avoid holding. The cost of that trade is that the judgement stays with you, and a page like this one is the most we can honestly offer in its place.

If a deal feels wrong in a way you cannot name, that is enough reason to walk away. You will find another sofa.

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