There’s really only one way to usher in the beginning of the holiday season and that’s by celebrating the greatest holiday of them all: Happy Vestival, everyone.

With purse strings tightened, shoppers nationwide are turning to online classifieds in search of great deals.  For the most part, shopping online classifieds is completely safe.  Most people want to do right by their neighbors and local communities. However, consumers should be cautious as online con artists are becoming more widespread and creative using online classifieds as a scam tactic.

Here at Oodle, safety is a top priority and we’ve taken a strong stance to combat the classifieds’ SPAM. In fact, our classifieds’

service uses proprietary fraud detection software to scan each and every listing before it can enter our network. In addition, our support team is armed with moderation tools for tracking down suspicious behavior and new scams.

In addition to everything Oodle is doing, the consumer can avoid most problems simply by following some common sense tips for buying and selling.  To learn more about how you can keep yourself safe from online scams and fraud, we’ve published an online safety guide in conjunction with the Better Business Bureau.

Here are a few of the most popular scams we’ve seen in our safety queue this holiday season:

• Overpayment scam: This is a scam targeting the seller.  The alleged buyer states that he will send a money order over asking price to cover shipping costs. Here’s the hitch: he needs the buyer’s personal information, including address, bank account numbers, etc. to send the money order. This scammer does not want your money; he wants your identity.
• Just pay-for-shipping scam: This scam targets the buyer. The alleged seller requests that the shipping costs be paid in advance. A sample scam listing might offer a pet up for “adoption” to a good home. While this may appear perfectly legitimate, a suspect scammer will likely suggest that the potential adoptee “act fast” and that the “puppy has recently been taken to Nigeria.” We’ve seen this scam in many other categories, including electronics and merchandise.

If you do happen to run into a fraudster or are suspicious of a certain listing, tell us about it so we can spread the word.

Happy holidays and safe shopping.

Ah, office remodeling. We recently finished knocking out a wall here at the Oodle HQ, making way for the glorious sunlight. What was once a dark, rarely-visited corner has since become a place of merriment and joy.

Check out all our remodeling photos on Flickr!

Check out our Wordle “word cloud” of the Oodle blog. Pretty nifty!

We just found out that the Oodle HQ gets a whopping 98/100 score on Walkscore. Score a point for the “San Mateo is the new Palo Alto” team!

Our favorite grandfather of online classifieds turned 55 today!

Argh mateys, we take Talk Like a Pirate Day completely seriously here, which be why we created a search engine for classifieds just for pirates.

For today only, Oodle be all about pirates. T’ see t’ origin o’ Talk Like a Pirate Day, check out http://www.talklikeapirate.com.

While you can’t actually buy a Yak on Oodle, the company’s intrepid co-founder has been taking them for a test drive…