A Warning To All Ebay Traders
by admin | November 30, 2010 | under Ebay | Comments (13)
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.
13 Responses to “A Warning To All Ebay Traders”
Thanks Robert. Forwarned etc…B***t**ds
Hi yes there are tooooo many scamms on ebay
and those that take money for an item and never send it nor answer contact how ever sent
should be refused trading in any form every where on the internet
I have suffered at the hands of Scammers but once I get my teeth in I dont give up until I win
no matter how long it takes and no matter how small or large the payment
they eventually get sick and pay up
and the threat to post thier name on eveey social site on the net puts the cold steel where the sun dont shine
yet ebay are now a little fairer with this sort of problem
I recently had a scam sorted out fast got money back within 24 hrs of escallating case best to telephone ebay on their free service it gets faster responce
BUT I really wish they would cancel the accounts of such nasty pieces of work and tell ebay this when ever I encouter the problem
if every one boycotted ebay until they did properly with such people then ebay would really soon do something
and paypal is just as bad
I have started using easybid.biz
and Alertpay for my transactions
much better by far
kindest regards to you all
Andy
May Jehovah bless you and all of your loved ones
Hi Robert,
This is a very valuable lesson for us all, as so many scammers now are getting smarter. I just wish they would use their talents to help people and themselves make money, instead of hurting people.
What these people get out of doing this kind of thing, heaven alone only knows. However, people, beware if someone as experienced as Robert can get fooled, then so can we all.
Be on your Guard.
Hi Andy
Thanks for your comments. To be fair to ebay I don’t think this email came from someone with an ebay account, just someone with knowledge of how the ebay messaging system works. It looks like an ebay message but it isn’t.
It’s the same tossers who send out emails pretending to be from Facebook, Paypal or your bank. But yeah, ebay ought to put their own house in order as well.
Take care
Robert
This trick works on a mac using mail, but should work with most email apps. Before you click on a link in an email message, hover your mouse over the link and the destination url will show up. Look at the first part of the url after http://www and you should see that the url is going to an address that will redirect to the scammers url. If the url has been shortened, which legal sites don’t do, don’t click the link.
Hi Paul
Yes learned a valuable lesson today – don’t get complacent.
Cheers
Robert
Tim
Thanks for your comment. Yes that trick works exactly the same in Windows and I usually do that anyway. Point is the email was so good it just didn’t occur to me that it was a scam. I get several fake Paypal and Facebook emails a day, they’re easy to pick. Just missed this one – lost concentration I guess.
But great advice for anyone who didn’t know that trick.
Cheers
Robert
Just a quick note to the spammers sending comments in to get a backlink – can you at least make a bit more effort? I might even let some of them through, I don’t necessarily mind people trying to get a backlink but you have to earn it.
Yes Karen/Sandra/Melissa_as77/Anita_as77 I’m talking to you and the PLR articles you’re trying to push. I’ve deleted more PLR articles from my hard drive than you have in your entire collection. And trust me, no one takes free blogspot domains seriously. If you really want to make money online from PLR then contact me.
Some of the efforts are pretty funny though, this is my favourite:
“Like someone else claims what a fantastic blog this is. Typically I dont bother with a remark then again for your hard work you are worthy of one. Effectively”
Dude, just say no to drugs OK?
Hi Robert,
I recently received this email from PayPal, which I thought looked suspicious:
Dear Mike Mulanax,
As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the
PayPal system. During a recent screening, we noticed an issue regarding
your account.
We have reason to believe that your account was accessed by a third party.
We have limited access to sensitive PayPal account features in case your
account has been accessed by an unauthorized third party. We understand
that having limited access can be an inconvenience, but protecting your
account is our primary concern.
Case ID Number: PP-001-126-536-057
For your protection, we have limited access to your account until
additional security measures can be completed. We apologize for any
inconvenience this may cause.
To review your account and some or all of the information that PayPal used
to make its decision to limit your account access, please visit the
Resolution Center. If, after reviewing your account information, you seek
further clarification regarding your account access, please contact PayPal
by visiting the Help Center and clicking “Contact Us”.
We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand
that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your
account. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department
Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you
will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account
and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.
PPID PP522
I have gotten many SPOOFS of this sort in the past, so I logged into my PayPal account in a new browser window, and in this case, the email was legit. I couldn’t access my account with out updating my security questions.
You can never be too careful. Always log into your accounts directly without using any links.
Have a great evening,
Mike
Hey Mike
Yeah the Paypal spoofs are coming through almost daily now. Thanks for posting that up.
Cheers
Robert
I have had these many times and, like you said, if you are not listing the item in questions (or any item) then, why even open them?
But, as you rightly point out, these things ARE genuine looking and, I would hope that Ebay would DO something to STOP these people but … in my experience, Ebay doesn’t give a S**T about their customers (Buyers or sellers) as I have found, to my cost, over the years, whether buying or selling.
I use Ebay now only if I really HAVE to.
David
It’s easy to be caught out when one’s mind is other things as we tend to do things on autopilot sometimes. It’s not just spoof emails you need to worry about though as someone hacked into my ebay account just before Xmas last year.
First I knew something was up was when I got email notifications for sales of hair straighteners which I wasn’t even selling.
Give credit to eBay though, they were on the case before I knew it and explained that the hackers somehow got into my yahoo email account which I used for ebay purposes.
The crooks are crafty sods because they blocked all notifications from ebay that were coming from my yahoo account so I was unaware of the problem. I have no idea how they did all this but it definitely wasn’t by my clicking on a spoof email as I am super careful about this. Since then my yahoo password has been changed to a humongously long one.
eBay soon sorted it out for me in a couple of hours with no further problems, but I can’t say that about the dozen or so unwitting ‘buyers’ who might have lost out to the tune of £50 or so each.
One or two emailed me so I had to explain what had happened and none of them gave me any grief about it luckily.
Thank you for the above information and all of the comments. Very important to be aware of these scammers and their tricks. It is so difficult in the first place to try to set up any type of online money making venture and be successful without having the extra hassles.
Thanks again am adding your rss feed to my bookmarks. It’s not often you come across helpful information.
Regards Lilly
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