eBay phishing scams - A new one on me

Kim Coxon

Kim Coxon

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I thought I was fairly savvy to most of the phishing scams but this one was new on me and nearly caught me.

I was selling an item and about half way through I received an "ask seller a question" email direct from ebay. The header etc was correct and it was genuine. The "prospective buyer" asked me if the item I was selling was the same as this one with a link which looked kosher. Although I quite often answer questions direct, I logged on first and opened the same message in ebay my messages. I am logged on to the site so the message is real. My immediate thought was that someone had copied my auction.

When I hit the link, I went to a sign-in page. Quite often if you jump from the UK site to another, you have to log in again but in this case, my user name wasn't there. My first thought was that the "buyer" had put a link into his watching page rather than the item (it has happened!). I closed that and put a search in for the item number in the link string. I found a completed french auction for baby clothes! I looked at the string again and it was very good but wasn't quite right.

I forwarded the message to the ebay scam address and received a reply that they confirmed the email had not come from them! 😕 I replied saying that it was and it was in my message page. I then received a more useful reply saying what precautions I should take if I had "logged on".

The scammers are becoming more creative. It would appear that even if you type the address in yourself and log on the the proper site, you still need to be very carefull.

Kim
 
We received a similar "ebay" message at the office Monday in which the message said "Your order has been sent. Please let me know when you've received it and don't forget my feedback." Then there was a link to the supposed "auction".

I first copied the "auction" number and went to the real ebay where it came up as a non-existing auction. When I clicked on the link in the message, it took me to a log-in page. I quickly closed everything and deleted the message. Logging in, I'm certain, would have given a thief information to be used to make purchases that would go to someone else while the bill came to me.

It pays to be careful when receiving unrequested ebay messages.

Walker
 
I don't doubt you got the message you say, and I'm darn glad you mentioned it, I hadn't seen that one yet either. But I doubt the message came from ebay. I could be wrong, but if you know how to read email headers, it may well have come from somewhere else and be doctored to look like an email message from ebay. I can send you a message that looks just like "Ask a Seller a Question" email, but it won't be from eBay. However, you could be right, and in any case, thank you for the heads up.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
I can read the headers too 😉 which is why it nearly caught me. It was also on my "message page" when I logged on and only genuine eBay massages can get there.

Kim

bmattock said:
I don't doubt you got the message you say, and I'm darn glad you mentioned it, I hadn't seen that one yet either. But I doubt the message came from ebay. I could be wrong, but if you know how to read email headers, it may well have come from somewhere else and be doctored to look like an email message from ebay. I can send you a message that looks just like "Ask a Seller a Question" email, but it won't be from eBay. However, you could be right, and in any case, thank you for the heads up.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
Click to expand...
 
I always log-in to these with a fake name and password to detect these scams.
Real pages wont let you in as such but fakes will.
 
Kim Coxon said:
I can read the headers too 😉 which is why it nearly caught me. It was also on my "message page" when I logged on and only genuine eBay massages can get there.

Kim
Click to expand...

Yep, you're right. Must have been genuine if it appeared on your 'message page' screen. Well that sucks.

By the way, no insult intended, not everyone can read headers. I wrote a few papers on the subject, a long time ago when I was an anti-spammer.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
I've gotten some "question from an eBayer" notes, but they are so obviously phony I deleted them right away. The trick? It purportedly comes from a buyer, who says in the message "I sent payment for the item. Have you shipped?" or something along those lines. You're expected to reply "what the !$#** are you talking about?" only AFTER you click on a link and give the thief your login and password.

Again, they were so obviously phony I never though about forwarding them to eBay. Since I get them fairly often, I'll send these notes to eBay from now on.

Thanks for the warning! 🙂
 
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