How to identify Zillow Rental Manager spam

[Lisa Thiessen]

I am using Zillow Rental Manager for the first time to communicate with potential tenants. The inbox messaging feature seems pretty handy, but how do you identify spam? I have gotten several legitimate messages from actual people, but I just received one that raises some red flags. The listing is very thorough and clearly for a house, but the initial inquiry is a generic request for information about an apartment. I reply, basically repeating the description in the listing. The writer responds, offering a few unsolicited introductory personal details, specifically mentioning that he's a US Citizen, but currently working out of the country and moving back home because his contract is ending and he plans to stay here for more than 1 year. Then he asks some very specific questions that are already answered in the listing. This is obviously a non-native English speaker so I don't want to just discount him because he's not understanding the listing due to a language barrier, but I also don't want to waste a bunch of time communicating with a bot or giving information to a scammer so he can spoof my listing. Has anyone else had a similar experience?