Attempted Fraud on my Wife's EBay Account (vanity)

10/6/2003

[gitmo]

I got home from work, and my wife took my youngest son to Cub Scouts. (His 2nd meeting: he's SO PROUD).

I browsed FreeRepublic for a while, and then went to check my email. My dear wife had forwarded an email from purported to be from EBay. It had the EBay icon and looked official. It said:

---

Dear eBay user,

As stated in the User Agreement, Section 5.1, we may request you to change you password. Because of security reasons and for your saftey, please understand the situation and be so kind to change your password. Please acces the following link to change your password : http://xxx5.xxxxx.com/xx-xxx/eBayxxxxx.dll?RegisterShow .



We thank you for your cooperation.

Respectfully,
Customer Support (Trust and Safety Department)

eBay Inc

---

(I've altered the URL so no one will accidently go there.)

When I passed my mouse over the hyperlink, I noticed the URL in my status bar didn't match the URL visible in the link.

I went to ebay and found their fraud dept. I forwarded them a copy of the email and they responded within 15 minutes. They said this was indeed a fraudulent email not at all connected with ebay. They referred me to their identity theft page. Apparently this was a new one to them and they're investigating it.

When Mrs Gitmo got home, I asked her if she had done anything with the email. She said she had changed our password. She had done this on the bogus website.

I've changed her ebay password, her "secret hints", as well as her PayPal stuff and I've notified our credit card company. (I don't think they could get any credit card info, but better safe than sorry.)

Ebay says they NEVER ask for any password, credit card, or personal information in email. And you should never go to ebay through a hyperlink in an email. The bogus site looked like an official ebay site. I checked it out.

It looks to me like I beat these anal sphincters to our accounts. I hope that posting this will protect someone else.

[gitmo]

Watch out for scams. We've gotten a lot of good textbooks from ebay, at darn good prices. But be careful for con artists.

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[Ex-Dem]

Another one huh. FReepers seem to have been hit hard by EBay scams lately.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/967638/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/981949/posts

I think that first link explains how the scam works.

[Born Conservative]

One of the red flags in this: LOTS of spelling and grammar errors (you would see better editing if it were to come from Ebay). I guess the Clymers that did this don't believe in spell checkers...

[Dialup Llama]

Never fill out and submit a form which was sent to you by email. Ebay can contact you and say something like, 'log in to account admin to do such and such' but they'll NEVER send you a HTML form thru email.
Be cautious about what you let run under the mail client. I wouldn't let my browser run Java or plug-ins while reading mail.
Never press buttons embedded in a doc sent to you by email.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

Thankyou gitmo! And hugs for that little Webelo wannabe. :0)

[Mears]

Thanks!!!!

[Alouette]

I got a similar email from "ebay" and deleted it without opening it. Dumb shmucks sent it to an email address which is NOT THE ONE that I use for ebay.

[gitmo]

And hugs for that little Webelo wannabe. :0)

I didn't know he could smile that big. I've been showing him some of my old scouting paraphenalia with the Guantanamo Bay patches. He thinks it's SO COOL.

[MississippiMan]

I've gotten two or three of these e-mails lately from "eBay," as well as a couple from "Yahoo!"

MM

[tangerine]

Over the past two months, I've received dozens of similar emails like this - supposedly from Ebay. I forward them to scam@ebay.com.

[FlyVet]

I got the same thing. One of our local talk radio weekend computer jocks, Dave Mason, talked about it on his radio program. Yup, it's bogus. Beware.

I have an old Netzero e-mail account that I check once in awhile. Netzero doesn't block spam, and it's unbelievable the amount of fraudulent con-man spam that goes out over the Internet. I've gotten mortgage offers from Russia, and I can have a fake college diploma for a nominal fee.

[CometBaby]

I got one of these about a week ago .. and immediately reported it to paypal. Here is what it looked like .. and if you run your mouse over the url it doesn't go to the website it claims to.

> Dear PayPal user! > > At 09.27.2003 our company has lost a number > of accounts in the system during the database > maintenance. If you have an active account, please > click on the link below to update your credit card > information. If you have problems with your account, please let us know > at email support@paypal.com > > https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_UpdateInformation

I never respond to these things .. rather I report them. I guess there is one going around with MSN too.

[Britton J Wingfield]

A friend of mine got his account hijacked by falling for this. It was a guy out of Romania that was doing the jacking.

My gullible friend did manage to get his account back, but it was not a fun process.

[massadvj]

I'm an eBay dealer with over 4,000 feedbacks. I get about 4-5 of these per week. You should FORWARD (not send) it to spoof@ebay.com. They will go after them. Unfortunately, these people are like cockroaches, terrorists and spam. You fumigate and fumigate, and still they keep coming back in different mutations.

[MHT]

I've had so many e-mails from ebay telling me that if I don't update my credit card information,etc. that they will cancel my account, etc. One even used a different font from ebay (more like an old typewriter). One time, I went to the link and it wanted the bank code off my checks, my birthday, social security and, finally, the pin number of my ATM. I knew that one for sure wasn't ebay. Finally, I have decided to delete all my e-mail from ebay. I have kept a few that I could send to the attorney general of my state. One time I wrote the real ebay people about it and they said that they don't write users like that and said to watch out for frauds. (To think that I actually got a response from the ever elusive ebay!)

Bottom line, I finally decided to be a buyer only and deal directly, through money orders, with the sellers. I won't sell on ebay because of the confusion with their charging a real credit card versus trying to figure out whose fraudulent and who's not.

The inability of ebay to control fraud might ultimately hurt their business--but not until enough buyers and sellers get bitten!

[MHT]

I have earthlink and get about 100 spams a day. No matter how much I block senders, delete, etc., I still get spam, including duplicate porno, body part improvement, mortgage refi's, pharmacies, etc.

How can I block spam?

And, is there a better system than POW for getting rid of pop-up's?

[BJungNan]

Even when it is really on ebay you need to watch out

Over 5,000 negatives

[wardaddy]

EBay is not without risk.

We've bought maybe 20 things in 2 years or so and got burned by the seller on the last one and EBay's mediation or resolution service was slow to react and once discovered that this seller had burned about 15 folks in a few days, then removed all traces of the account and left everything in the hands of the resolution service.

It would have been nice to keep up with the other burned buyers to coordinate things such as at which bank....in Colorado Springs, the shyster had passed the checks.

It was only about 75 bucks.

Does PayPal guarantee the purchase?

[Valpal1]

The first clue to the fake was "Dear Ebay User".

Ebay knows your real name and address from when you signed up. All real ebay email will use the full first and last name you registered your ebay account with.

That said, you should always check the headers, and never use email links to log in to your accounts.

Send all suspect emails to spoof@ebay.com