Beware - Ebay scam

Gayle · 12-12-2005, 17:04

Following on from our scam thread last week I received this email today from Ebay. As you can see it looks completely genuine and preys on gullible people who will fear that their account has been accessed. The truth is that if you click on the link and key in your account details you are walking straight into the crook's hands. Be careful - it might look genuine but like we've said before - never, never, never follow a link that asks you to key in your account details.

***Urgent Safeharbor Department Notice*** eBay Fraud Mediation Request
Date: Sun, 06 November 2005
You have recieved this email because you or someone had used your account to make fake bids at eBay. For security purposes, we are required to open an investigation into this matter.
THE FRAUD ALERT ID CODE CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE WILL BE ATTACHED IN OUR FRAUD MEDIATION REQUEST FORM, IN ORDER TO VERIFY YOUR EBAY ACCOUNT REGISTRATION INFORMATIONS.
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Fraud Alert ID CODE: 00937614
(Please save this Fraud Alert ID Code for your reference.)

To help speed up this process, please access the following form to complete the verification of your eBay account registration informations:
Please Note:
If we do not receive the appropriate eBay account verification within 48 hours, then we will assume this eBay account is fraudulent and will be suspended.
The purpose of this verification is to ensure that your eBay account has not been fraudulently used and to combat the fraud from our community.We appreciate your support and understanding, as we work together to keep eBay a safe place to trade.

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

Regards, Safeharbor Department (Trust and Safety Department)
eBay Inc.

Please do not reply to this e-mail as this is only a notification. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.

Copyright © 2005 eBay Inc. All Rights Reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. eBay and the eBay logo are trademarks of eBay Inc. eBay is located at 2145 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125.

WillowTheWhisp · 12-12-2005, 17:12

There seem to be a lot of crooks using eBay at the moment don't there Gayle?

Can I just mention to avoid any auctions on there where they ask you to pay by Western Union.

Gayle · 12-12-2005, 17:12

Actually, it's even cleverer than what I first thought. I tried to forward it to Ebay to their fake email centre but to be able to do that I would have had to download the images. Of course, downloading the images would have given the senders more info about my email account. Very clever and very, very dodgy. So, what I did was a screen print - put that in an email and sent that to the ebay fake email dept.

WillowTheWhisp · 12-12-2005, 17:22

Grrr

They're getting cleverer aren't they?

Gayle · 12-12-2005, 17:31

Even better - I've just received an email from ebay saying that they could not accept my complaint because it was not a 'forwarded message' and my idea of using screen print and attaching it to my complaint email meant that ebay wouldn't receive the complaint.

So brilliant
1. Clever scam letter might get some gullible people falling for it
2. Trying to complain means you have to download images which would give the scammers more information
3. Trying to circumnavigate the download images by using other methods means it won't be received by ebay and therefore, it's impossible to complain

Very clever!

WillowTheWhisp · 12-12-2005, 18:40

Not very clever of eBay though is it? I presume the reply you got was a standard one churned out by some automatic wotsit.

entwisi · 13-12-2005, 09:32

Gayle, There is no reason why you can't forward an email without downloading the images. The email they sent you is just HTML. it contains only links to their images. You are perectly correct in not downloading teh images as they use a unique ID in the links that tells them which email address is 'calling home' they then know that it is a valid used address and they sell it on to all and sundry.

The best way to stop all this is as I mentioned in the last post about scam emails is to only ever view(AND SEND!!!!) email in plain text. You can force your email client to do this in the tools, options facility.

Gayle · 13-12-2005, 10:02

If I try to forward the email it bars me from doing it without downloading the images. There must be some sort of clever coding in the email that does that. I haven't pasted the entire email.

entwisi · 13-12-2005, 11:27

Clicking to text only will disable any javascript. One other alternative is to right click the email in your inbox, select properties, Then teh details tab, then message source. Copy this text into an email and send it to me entwisiATthe-entwistlesDOTcoDOTuk. I'll rip it apart for you

park381 · 15-12-2005, 17:39

Thanks for the info gayle, the more of us that are aware of these scams the better.

Mik Dickinson · 19-12-2005, 09:26

Actually reading this i got one here in Germany.Problem being it was all in English so i knew automatically that summat was wrong.Matr of mine has just had a visit from thr police over here.He bought a machine for sucking the damp air out of his cellar as he has just bought a house over here and it turns out that its stolen.The guy selling them on e bay over here was staeling them from his employer

Neil · 19-12-2005, 10:07

Gayle I think it would be a good idea if you edited your original post and removed the live link to the scamers email address. As you hover your mouse over "http://scgi.ebay.com/verify_id=ebay &fraud alert id code=00937614" which looks like a genuine address it shows the scammers email address as "http://******.com/ws/aw-cgi/SignIn.html". I added to "*" so no-one will follow the link to what will probably look like a genuine ebay page.

Gayle · 19-12-2005, 13:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neil

Gayle I think it would be a good idea if you edited your original post and removed the live link to the scamers email address. As you hover your mouse over "http://scgi.ebay.com/verify_id=ebay &fraud alert id code=00937614" which looks like a genuine address it shows the scammers email address as "http://******.com/ws/aw-cgi/SignIn.html". I added to "*" so no-one will follow the link to what will probably look like a genuine ebay page.

Fair point - so I've deleted it altogether.

Andromeda · 28-03-2006, 10:25

I have found that genuine ebay messages come straight to my inbox, whereas the spoof ones go to the Junk mail box. Just click on forward and send it to spoof @ebay.com

WillowTheWhisp · 28-03-2006, 10:36

Some spoof/scam eBay messages come to my email inbox some to my email junk but genuine eBay messages should also show up in your "my messages" in your "my eBay"