Well, it finally happened. Never thought I’d be dumb enough to fall for it, but I clicked on a spoof email today. Grrrrr. In mitigation I’ll say the email I got looks identical to a genuine message from an eBay seller, sent via eBay messages. Now, I’m assuming it’s not just me who’s been targeted here so you might be next. If you’re not currently trading on eBay and if you have no intentions of ever doing so you can afford to ignore this post. On the other hand, if you have an eBay account then read through this.
First this is what the email looked like, I’ve had to spread it across 2 images. Click on each image to view full size, then click your browser’s “back” button to come back to this page. Or open it in a new tab or window.
Pretty much a perfect copy I’d say.
Except for 2 things:
- The greeting is blank – “Dear “. A genuine eBay message will have your eBay user name in there
- I’m not actually listing the item in question. In fact at the moment I’m not listing anything at all. D’oh
Anyway, like a fool I clicked the link and entered my eBay user name and password on what looked like a genuine eBay sign in page. Then realized what I’d done. Idiot.
It took me 4 password changes and a 45 minute live chat with eBay to resolve this. I’m not some internet newbie. I first went online back in 1992 with a Psion series 3 and a Compuserve account (anyone else remember those?). I thought I could spot these fakes.
The point is this can happen to all of us; we all get complacent, we all lose concentration momentarily. Check your eBay messages, indeed all emails from places where you have an account – Paypal, Facebook, Twitter, etc etc very very carefully. The same applies to anything from your bank.
Never EVER click a link in an email from places that require you to login, especially those holding any kind of financial or personal information about you. Open up a separate browser window, go to the site’s home page by typing in the URL and MANUALLY log in to your account.
Stay safe.