Fraudulent Ebay

I just received two fake ebay emails asking for my password, credit card info and other personal information. They said that if I don't respond within 24 hours, my account will be suspended. The subject line was : Verify Your Account.

If you guys see this and you don't know, DON'T respond! Report it to spoof@ebay.com

I got one of those too..it said it was from Pay Pal...I reported it to the address that you gave...

CaptMicha, You must update your thread or dire consequences may follow. The garden troll team may visit you. They will advise you that helping strangers is not a good idea. And people you've just met who seem so nice? They are the most dangerous of all. The trolls are here to help you. Can we borrow $200. We need new wheels. Pay you back from our Grinch fund. It's kind of in the red now.............If I don't post again, Merry christmas You guys and gals are so great

Huh? I'm not sure I understand that last post, but...

I've been getting those emails from both ebay and paypal a lot recently. Good advice to post Captn. Everyone needs to be aware of those types of things so they don't fall prey. Must be getting close to Christmas and the thieves are looking for credit cards to use.

I had these from Paypal and ebay for a while and I have never purchased or sold anything on ebay. I have engaged in 2 bids total. there is some sort of bank scam on line right now, so the local news says.

These companies will have to respond to these scams by increasing the security of their own sites beyond "we will never ask for your account information or password" I don't know how...
I LOVE the scam emails about the poor hapless daughter of the Emperor of Dudu that is being haranged by the government since her father died in the plane crash... & she needs your help with moving a secret money account to help her & her infant son flee the country or they will be jailed forever... & she found your name as a reliable kind person... They just get more & more convoluted! The stories are silly & the names are even sillier... the writing is halting english & then they come out with something like, "Loose lips sink ships." I can't believe anyone would fall for this stuff!

You also need to notify eBay about this....they want to know about these fraud messages, too.

And absolutely never go to the site they give you....

Edited to say to also notify Paypal about any of this stuff you get..

This message was edited Dec 1, 2004 9:57 PM

There is also a new virus that is carried ona link to Ebay... click on it & off the virus goes into your computer! It is an Ebay link in another email... not sent by Ebay.

This is why it is very important to have up to date virus protection for your computer..

But how do you tell the difference between these e-mails and the real ones from ebay? I get these all the time, and always ignored them.

Apparently one really WAS from ebay. Although my information was up to date, they insisted it wasn't, and I was locked out of my account. When I finally figured all this out, I asked where I could update it on ebay's site, but they insisted I send it by replying through the e-mail messages. So much for their claims that they never ask for private information through e-mail.

Now if I want to redeem myself I have to fill out a form swearing under oath my true identity with a copy of my drivers license.

Oh wow, Cheryl. That sounds goofy! I did reply to one of those emails CaptM was talking about in my early, dumber ebay days and a few months later our account was hijacked. DH just about went ballistic because he was bidding on something he really wanted. We had to change our email password, then email ebay after we had done that. Then they emailed back with an address to reply to and we had a 'live' chat with a guy who talked me through the 'unsuspending' the account process, and changing the ebay password. They also advised we change the password monthly for all accounts and never use the same password for anything. It was definitely a lesson learned, but thankfully they did not get into our paypal so we lost no money. If you have an excellent rating, like ours (100%), you are more likely to be targeted.

We had daily messages from the 'third world country' scam team for awhile but not for over a month now. They do get VERY old!

Going over this with ebay through email is slow. Add to that me getting in a snit about it, so I ignore it for awhile, and this has been ongoing for several months at least. I just noticed the live chat thing last week or so.

I think that will be my next try at being reinstated. I've enjoyed ebay but I just don't want to give them a copy of my d.l. especially after this fiasco. It convinces me that their procedures like this are encouraging or enabling the identity thieves & scammers.

Wow, Cheryl, I'm skeptical ab. a VALID "must reply through e-mail link" -- I really would never do it... your personal profile *is* available on their site by logging on your own way (type it in yourself).

*MY* most recent one is a message (appearing v.real and authetic) that announced I had added laptopseller['at' sign]yahoo.com as an authorized e-mail address to my PayPal account... and if this info was in error to click here to see my profile and remove or confirm.

Well, I think of myself as slightly sophisticated, not born last night and all -- but I clicked! It did (seem to) open my regular profile, and NO NEW ADDYs were there... very bizarre, I thought... NOW I need to scan and make sure I didn't actually get re-routed through some OTHER site that bugged my computer with some spyware (or something)! Yuck-o.

~'spin!~ p.s. Loved Frankay's message! Only, would have been more realistic if had misspelled 'consequences' ! p.p.s. It's probably not a good idea to open your door or your car to someone you don't know, even if they are holding a $5 bill saying you dropped it! (That's from another recent e-mail, possibly not really "real" but a real possibility nonetheless.) Tell them "merry christmas, don't spend it all in one place" (the chance you actually dropped the money isn't worth the chance the person is up to no good, right?).

Editting for third PS (ppps): oh yeah, another "Latest" -- there were two or three messages in my Bulk (i.e. Spam) filter THAT APPEARED TO BE *from* either spoof.ebay or spoof.paypal! Don't understand how the technique works, but spammers and scammers can make their message APPEAR to be from another, valid address... not just "looks valid" but actually the real addy. Makes it a bit more difficult... some time ago, eBay tech told me I should block the address [that some spoof had come from]... but I pointed out it was THEIR ADDY (it really was, I had written them about it by hitting "Reply"). Their reply to that was... "Oh. Yeah. Huh."

I actually would only bother to send/forward an attempted scam to one of the spoof addresses if it was something NEW and NOVEL. Variations on the same old same old, I figure they have seen (and seen and seen). ~'spin!~

This message was edited Dec 2, 2004 10:49 AM

Well, here's a monkey wrench I'm gonna throw in. I too, got those e-mails and I followed eBay's advice and forwarded them to eBay. They let me know that indeed, they were fake. They also told me early on that I would not have to give my credit card information in an e-mail.
Later, I began to get more and more of them and finally was told my account would be closed and guess what??? It was closed. It seems before the last sale we made, we realized we had security problems and got a new debit card. We owed them about $3.50 in fees. Well, we can't pay it because they won't let us into our account. And they won't send me a direct address so I can go to Paypal without going through them and pay them directly. Nor will they give me an address to mail a check. I have been trying to straighten this out for 2 months. I have not seen any way to send them new debit card numbers, either. Why can't they have a toll-free number for these kinds of weird problems???

Wow, that really is a monkey wrench -- guess that is probably [a variation of] what happened to Cheryl, I just didn't get it reading the first time.

Hey, maybe you can get through via the "live chat" line that Cheryl and kooger found -- get them to detail the location for that (sounds like you don't have to be logged in to your suspended account to use it -- but because YOU initiate, it would be hard to be highjacked. I didn't know eBay had one, but used live help/chat last year with L.L.Bean and saved having to pay separate shipping on an item I forgot to add to an order.

Good luck! ~'spin!~

The 'live chat' is up in the top right of the page when you log onto ebay. ....I just logged into ebay to check that I had it right and can't find the 'live chat' link? Is it no longer available?

They make it really small, I don't imagine they want alot of people using it instead of trying to solve their own problems (which saves them time and money of course).

It's top right, right above the red banner that says "The World's Online Market Place". You just have to put in your user name or email address and select a catagory for your inquiry.

here is some contact info i just found
the first is a link of contact info for everybody :-)
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~wwcoins/popcompanies.htm

& below i found elsewhere, hope this helps
woodspirit if i paypaled $3.50 to your account would that help ?

Contact eBay:
eBay Inc.,
2145 Hamilton Ave
San Jose
CA 95125
USA
408 376 7400
408 558 7400
fax 408 376 7401
fax 408 558 7494
UK fax
020 8605 3001

Contact Paypal:
Paypal
303 Bryant St
Mountain View
CA 94041
650 864 8000
fax 650 864 8001

Paypal
1840 Embarcadero Rd
Palo Alto
CA 94303
650 251 1100

WOW!

Dick, you take the cake!

Just stumbled across these, eh?

~'spin!~

If worse comes to worse and you're concerned about your eBay acct, go directly to eBay and update your info. Don't do it through the email. eBay and PayPal said they would NEVER ask for that info in an email.

I had to reinstate my PayPal account & we went back & forth several times via email... each one notifying me that someone had tried to update my account. While ot took a while to get it done, I was happy that it couldn't be fixed in one shot - someone else could have done it that easy, too! Now I have a new account with PayPal. The viruese go into your address books & attach to the anmes. It appears that one of your friends sent an virus when it gets through.. just remember that so you don't become angry at someone - they probably don't have a clue what it is about! No one would send a virus with a trail, anyhow. sigh. How did this all become so darned complicated?

I don't understand viruses. What's the point???? I can understand ones that enable money or information to be stolen but not ones that simply annoy and keep people's computers from working.

Apparently some people just enjoy inconveniencing and annoying others and forcing everyone to spend mega bucks cleaning out their systems. It is so juvenile!

I get E-mail with headers saying "Responding to your order" but they are from somebody I never ordered from. Those get dumped right away. If the subject is questionable and the sender is unknown to you, delete. You can e-mail friends and ask if they sent you something wierd. With a fire-wall and Spybot it's amazing how easy your system can be attacked. Be very careful of who gets your credit card #.

I'm afraid to even use it anymore, online that is. Last time I bought something. I sent a check. Is the security lock icon on the bottom right hand corner of the page reliable?

We keep a second checking account with a near-zero balance and only transfer funds into it when we are making a purchase. That way, if someone gets that account's debit card number, there is not anything there for the taking. That is also the account we link to with PayPal - again, if anyone hacks them and gets our account number, there is nothing there.

With HTML mail, a scammer can make a hyperlink appear to link to anything. That's one reason I prefer plain text e-mails, even though they don't show the "bells & whistles".

When you get one of these questionable e-mails, hover your mouse over the web URL's they give. Don't click it, just hover. When you hover like this, most e-mail program and browsers will display the actual URL of the hyperlink in the e-mail program's status bar at the bottom of your e-mail program's window. And 99.9% of the time, you'll see the links don't point to the website that appears in the e-mail. Sometimes it will just be a website listed as an IP address (a series of number separated by periods) or another website name altogether.

When you see something pointing to a URL different than what's listed in the hyperlink, that's a big red flag.

When this happened to me, I forwarded the bogus email to paypal. They promptly responded, and stated that any email from them will address you by full first and last name. They NEVER send one that says Dear Paypal customer.

I sell and buy often on Ebay, as does DH. We probably get a dozen or so of these spoof emails weekly. Delete Delete Delete. Or forward to spoof@ebay.com. If you go directly to Ebay via your browser, you can do a number of things immediately. Best is to change your password, even though it's a pain in the patooty, second, check your account to make sure no activity not initiated by you has been recorded, third, go to paypal and make sure there is no activity there that looks suspicious. If you can change your payment method, i.e. use a different credit/debit card, that would also help. I keep one account with a small amount of money in it for purchases, using a debit card so even if a hacker gets to it, it's hardly worth while because they won't be able to pay for anything substantial. If I buy something costlier than the amount in the account, I just transfer the necessary amount to cover the purchase. You really have to be careful with all this information floating around, and keep your "hinky" antenna raised at all times.

This spring while I was on vacation DH picked up a message on the answering machine, asking about a transaction on my checking/debit card account. He wrote down the phone number I was to call, and when I got back, I called the number. The person answering asked for my name, and I gave it, then asked for my account number. I refused to give it, stating that a simple name search (and what bank doesn't have one??) would supply the number, since they called me this should not be a problem . The party hung up. Hmmmm. So, I went to my bank branch office, and asked about the call. They said not to worry, there was no suspicious activity on my account. HOWEVER, the next time I went to use the debit card at the gas station, (where you just insert the card and don't need to use your PIN number) it was refused. Back to the bank. Checked the account. No apparent problem. Teller said, maybe it was because the card was up for renewal at the end of that month. To shorten this already too long story, it turned out the phone call was legitimate. The bank has a third party contract with a company that looks for unusual transactions on their customer accounts, and after they hung up on me for not giving them my account number, they FROZE my account for transactions not requiring a PIN. NIce. Sorta teed me off, but in retrospect, I'm glad they check for this sort of thing, but certainly the third party "checker" needs some improvement in their customer relations department. Or they should have called a second time, after my failed contact. Have you dozed off yet??? Sorry, this got a little long.

They should have just does a name search, like you said. Really, do they expect people to just go around handing out their info just because they say they're somebody?

I watched a show last night on the court TV channel about how people steal identities. I had to stand up and walk around not to fall asleep. This was the FBI really doing these things and then telling the people what they had done.
You would not believe what people throw in there garbage. One person threw out retirement account papers with social security number and pre-approved credit card letters. Also someone threw out W-2's. It showed these theives really do go thru garbage at the curbs. Make sure you shred or cut up even things with just your address. They said if you cut them up, place the pieces in different garbage bags so they can not be put back together.
Another thing was using your credit card to make phone calls at a pay phone. They stand a good ways back with a camcorder and zoom in to get your number as you punch it in. So they said always block the phone when putting your number in.
At a ATM machine they will put sticky stuff so the machine will keep your card and after you get frustrated they will tell you it happened to them and tell you to enter your pin a couple times and after you leave they use a wire with a hook to remove the card. They can even make new cards out of the hotel keys with the magnetic strip.
pick pockets will cause a comotion at the top of an escalator so the person behind you can lift a wallet out of your purse. On dropped change and bent over and everyone else ran into each other. When smashed together, a man reached in a womans purse but because she kept her stuff distributed in her purse instead of a wallet he only got a make-up case. Also they said keep your purse zipped.
At a store the clerk ask the lady for her social security number when she wrote a check. The lady even gave it to her.
Make sure a clerk does not swipe your card twice. One thief had a thing connected to a laptop so when the card was swiped it was put on the computer. Then they swiped it again on the cash register.
Posing as a sweepstake they will ask for your social for tax purposes.
Posing as a charity especially for children they will tell you you can put it on your credit card or ask for your social security number to send you a reciept to claim it.
With lap tops if you are working at a resturant or park, they have something they can locate your computer from close by and delete everything you have. Or get your info off of it.
They also showed computer hackers and keep your computer updated.
That is all I can remember. If there was more I am sure It will come to me. This was 3:00am so I am surprised I retained this much.

Be careful about using portable phones in your house. My husband can turn on our CB and pick up conversations in my neighbors homes. Never give sensitive information unless you are using a land line. FYI

It's really appalling what these people will do. It seems like nothing is safe anymore.

One thing I did was to get my bank to give me a credit card with the lowest amount they give on a credit card just to buy over the internet.

One more comment: SHRED EVERYTHING with your name on it!! Cross-cut shredders are best, I've been told. I used to just hand cut some stuff or put it in the garbage, (covered in coffee grounds etc.) Until I got our shredder, and started using it for everything, I didn't realize how much mail we get that has confidential information on it....Account numbers, SS numbers, etc. And it fills up pretty fast! Plus, now I get to dump all those shredded bits into the compost, making an attractive contrast to the brown and green.

Because we have no garbage pickup service, I have a burn barrell, recycle bins, and a compost bin. Very little gets bagged for the dump. Plus, every now and then I shread paper and make homemade paper.

I do the same as meezersfive - personal info papers (and the co-op checks I recently shredded) gets shredded then tossed in with the ickiest garbage on hand. I figure it would take someone with an incredibly strong stomach to piece back together shredded papers smeared with green furry leftovers - and worse ;o)

We have private trash haulers pick up twice a week, usually early afternoon. Since I'm home during the day, I also have the luxury of not hauling the cans to the curb until about the time I expect them to show up. The less time the cans sit up there, the less likelihood that anyone can pilfer through them. And I've watched the trash haulers - the garbage gets tossed in the truck and pneumatically compressed almost instantly, so I figure whatever's in there is pretty safe at that point.

That show Sandy mentioned was re-run last night. I saw all of it this time. One thing they recommended after shredding paper, was splitting it into 2 different garbage bags so make piecing it back together more difficult. A cross-shredder machine was also mentioned. ...Amazing insight into how these people operate!

People who are determined will get what they want. My sister's credit card was stolen before it ever arrived in her mailbox! My parent's never use their card, but a rep from a mail order company stole the number & used it elsewhere. I think it is smart to have 2 credit cards - as the biggest inconvenience is having to wait for a new card. Otherwise, all charges are dropped. so you are not liable for what they have stolen. Scammers have some unbelievable tools for they purposes. One thing I have done is to ask the credit card company to stop sending a billion blank checks each month. I won't use them as the interest charges are high, & I don't want to give someone a free ride with my credit card. They gripe, but they will stop mailing them if you ask. Scammers use fake email subject lines as mentioned just to get past the spam detectors... most are just junk emails. I love the delete button!

Also, another thing that will help w/ credit cards is writing "check ID" instead of signing that little section on the back. The bad side is not every cashier will check the id.

"see photo ID" is what we put on our cards. Some cashier's still don't check. But I make a point of showing them my ID. Walmart tells customers to report cashier's that don't check. My DS's debit card was stolen and they charged about $800. on it, with about $500. at Walmart. I told them their cashier's didn't check and they were NOT happy. Did not cost DS anything.