Someone asked me to read back a six-digit code. What is that?

What is actually happening

The Federal Trade Commission describes the mechanism directly. The scammer contacts the number on your listing, asks you to send a Google Voice verification code to prove you are a real person, and uses that code to set up a Google Voice account linked to your phone number. The Identity Theft Resource Center and AARP have published the same warning.

What they get is a phone number that traces back to you, which they use to run the same approach on other people. Your number ends up tied to an account somebody else controls.

You were asked because your number was printed on a public listing where anyone could read it. That is the whole prerequisite. The scam does not reach you through a marketplace inbox. It reaches you because the ad carries a number Google will send a code to.

What to do if you already sent the code

• Reclaim the number. Google publishes a process for a number linked to another account: sign in to Google Voice with the account you want it on and follow Google’s current steps. Use Google’s own support pages rather than a forum’s version, because the steps change.
• Stop replying. Blocking is fine. Arguing gives them another chance to ask for something.
• Report it. In the United States, reportfraud.ftc.gov. In Canada, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
• Check whether any other account uses that number to recover a password.

If your number is Canadian, this version cannot work on you

Google Voice’s free signup requires a United States phone number and a United States IP address, and it checks both. There is no Canadian consumer version. So when a scammer types a Canadian mobile into Google’s form, Google refuses it and no code is ever generated. A Canadian seller was never eligible to be caught by the canonical version of this scam.

That does not make the text safe. Verification-code scams are a family rather than one trick, and somebody asking a Canadian to read back a code may be signing up for something that does accept Canadian numbers: a messaging app, a marketplace account, something opened in your name. The rule does not change, and it is the only rule you need. Never read back a code to somebody who contacted you first.

The advice that costs nothing

• Leave the phone field blank and use the marketplace chat. Kijiji and Facebook Marketplace both work that way.
• Never send a code you did not ask for. No legitimate buyer needs one.
• Treat "let me verify you first" from a stranger as the scam itself, not as diligence.

If your listing has to carry a number

Some ads cannot use a marketplace inbox: a printed sign, a flyer, an ad cross-posted to four sites. There a number that is not your mobile is worth having for ordinary reasons. The ad outlives the sale, and whoever copied the number down keeps it.

TheLocalRing rents one. Texts to it arrive in your email and your reply goes back as an SMS from that number. A pass gives you the number for one, three, or seven days. Monthly keeps it until you cancel, at C$14.99 with the first 14 days free and a card collected up front. Passes from C$2.99.

That is a privacy tool, not a scam defence. Nothing on this page is a reason to buy it.

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