• Slow down. Scammers often try to create a sense of urgency to convince you to do something without thinking it through. Take time to review the message, and be skeptical when you’re asked to act quickly.

• Be wary of requests for money. PayPal’s “Send Money” feature has no sender protections — any funds you transfer this way are lost forever. If you need to issue a refund to a fan, check out our guidelines here.

• If a message claims to be from Bandcamp, check the source. Bandcamp will never contact you through the contact form on your Bandcamp page. Check the sender email address to be sure it was sent from a bandcamp.com email domain. Bandcamp will only ever contact you from addresses ending in @bandcamp.com.

• Keep an eye out for typos, suspicious wording, or odd formatting in the message.

• Check that any links to Bandcamp’s login page use a bandcamp.com URL before clicking them (you can do that by hovering over a link). Scammers may use domains similar to Bandcamp’s (eg. bandcamp.se, bandcannp.com).

• Bear in mind that Bandcamp will never ask for your password or credit card details in an email.

What you should do if you receive a suspicious message

Don’t respond. We recommend that you do not engage with a scammer for any reason. If you have already engaged with a suspected scammer, simply stop responding.

Report the message. If you receive a suspicious message about your Bandcamp page, please contact us. We take scams targeting our users very seriously, and we may follow up with you directly for more details as part of our investigation.

Recognizing scams

Most scams on marketplaces like Bandcamp involve someone paying a large amount of money for one or more of your releases and asking you to send them a portion of your share. Here are some examples:

Overpayment scams

How it works

• You receive a purchase of an album, track, or other item from your Bandcamp page for more than the minimum price (for example, $70 USD for an album you’ve priced at $7 USD).

• The scammer reaches out to you directly and tells you that they made a mistake and meant to pay only a fraction of that amount.

• They ask you to refund the overpayment amount directly to a PayPal account or other account rather than requesting a refund through Bandcamp. The scammer’s PayPal email address is often different from the buyer email, which is another sign that something is not quite right.

• After you send money to the buyer, a dispute or chargeback is initiated for the original purchase.

• Because reversals are deducted from your payouts, you lose the funds received from the original purchase as well as the amount that you sent them directly.

Marketing and promotion scams

How it works

• You receive a message, usually via a third-party platform like Facebook, offering to promote your music to wealthy clients willing to pay much higher than the minimum price for your releases on Bandcamp. In exchange, you are asked to send a large percentage of those sales (for example, 40-60%) as a fee for the services. The scammer may also offer to buy full digital discographies, and they may encourage you to raise the price before making their purchases.

• The scammer makes large purchases from your page using fake names and fraudulent payment sources, such as stolen credit cards or compromised PayPal accounts.

• In the weeks or months following these purchases, disputes or chargebacks are opened for the original fraudulent transactions. When the chargebacks are processed by Bandcamp, these sales are refunded, and the funds are recouped from your future sales.

• As a result, you will have lost the funds from those fraudulent sales as well as any money sent to the scammer directly.

Variations on the promotion scam

• Instead of claiming to be a promoter, a scammer may tell you that the money you send back to them will be donated to a charitable cause.

• A scammer may pose as an employee of Bandcamp using a fake social media account or email address.

Phishing scams

Phishing is when someone tries to trick you into sharing private information, such as your login credentials, by sending a message pretending to be Bandcamp.

If you believe you have been phished:

• Reset your password (including any other services where you have used the same password).

• If you can no longer access your account to reset your password, contact us.

• Forward the phishing email to this address.

If you believe your account was compromised by an unauthorized user

When the login or payment email for your account is changed, Bandcamp will send a notification email to both the previous address and the new one. If you believe that changes were made to your account without your permission, please contact us.