E Mail appears to be from E Bay but is not!!!

neilsue

I received yesterday an E mail which to a well practiced ebay user looked as though it came from Ebay. It asked me to update my credit/debit card and that if I didn't my account would be suspended. I duly began filling it in, and luckily a warning bell rang. I emailed Ebay yesterday evening to ask them about this and they have just confirmed that the e mail is fraudulent. Please beware all EBAY users - I very nearly gave all my credit card details. >:(

MrPayless

I had exactly the same thing. 100% convincing had I not known better, I would have gladly handed my details over.

On a related but separate note - Im not technical but a guy in my office (who is technical) showed me how easy this is. He sent me an email from Admin@ebay.com calling me some rude words!

Basically anyone can set up an email account that appears to be from a particular person (if they know how to). If they want to defraud you etc they will ask you to click a link etc because if you do reply to the email it will not go to them but to, in this example Admin@email.com - shockingly easy if you know how.

Glad

neilsue
I've had a number of these and they usually ask you to sign in with your ebay user id and password before you get to page that asks you to update your details, I fell for this 1st time and signed in (didn't fill in credit details though, like you warning bell rang)
but if you did enter password this may be enough for them to do some damage, I immediately changed all of mine.

s@sha

I get at least two of these emails a month, in various forms...some saying "there is a problem with your account details" or "we believe your account has been hijacked", things like that. In all cases they ask you to sign in to your account by clicking on the link in the email. They often target ebay users with fairly high feedback.

It is worth remembering that Ebay state they will never ask you to sign into your account via a link in an email. If they wanted you to contact them, they would ask you to go to their home page manually & sign into your account in the normal way. So any email that asks you to follow a link to sign in, no matter how legitimate it looks, will be fraudulent.

sra

I think I already pointed out in another thread that this one really worried me because it is so simple

JPS

Yep this e-mail scam is bad it must be sucking in 100s of eBayers a day! My m8 filled it in and then called me asking if he should have....I had to tell him the bad news and got him to change his eBay password straight away and order a new credit card and canel old one. These things look amazingly real and when I first got one I was lured in myself but I knew eBay would never suspend your account if you do not fill in a form within 72 hours.

Apparently if you put your mouse over the @ebay email address it says who it is really from.

eBayers must be made aware about these fraudulent e-mails!!

Addy

I don't believe it!!!

Despite reading this thread only a week ago or so...when I got one of these emails yesterday, it caught me out. Luckily I came to my senses before entering my proper User ID & password.....but it's pretty convincing, be warned.

BTW. Once I'd realised, I entered a made-up ID (something profane) and a made-up password (cue more profanity) and it took me through to a page that would definitely set alarm bells off - requesting credit card details WITH ATM PIN No.....surely most people would start to suspect something at that point!!!

hyperion_2

There are new ideas for email scams on a daily basis, and their frequency is becoming alarming. Fortunately I'm one of those that has html displays turned OFF on my email client, and any 'web-based' pages that are sent to me are shown in their raw text format as an attachment. The benefit of this is that you can actually see the URL of the page to which the link refers, and not the one that is shown on the link text.

Armed with such information, it's a simple matter to determine the owners/registrar info of the domain to which the scam site is related (by doing a 'whois'), and in some cases the physical location of the site. Simply forward that to the law enforcement agencies and they do the rest - it's surprising how quickly these things get taken down once they have the information and, I believe, the arrest and conviction success rate is quite high.

soolin

I got one this morning very professional looking as well. By the time I did the search and pulled the headers to report it the site had already been taken down. That was within an hour of me receiving it!

Just remember though, it doesn't matter how good these are you cannot fall for them if you remember never to follow a direct link in an e mail supposedly from ebay. If ebay ever want you to change anything on your auctions or details they will always ask you to log in using your normal pages and take it from there, they do not supply a log in screen for you.

There was an interesting discussion on the business news at lunchtime yesterday on BBC 2 about these phishing scams, they mainly concentrated on the bank ones but they are the same principle as the ebay ones. Apparently despite the press coverage and warnings about them, 4% of people surveyed said they wouldn't think twice about providing information via a log in screen if the e mail they received looked official. 4% doesn't seem a lot but the amount of these blasted emails doing the rounds must mean that dozens of people every day get caught by them.

Soo

beachbeth

Just had one of these this morning saying that someone was trying to access my account and place listings and that they had heard from my bank that amounts were being asked for from my credit card! I knew immediately it was a scam. Even if I hadnt realised, the fact that it asked for my pin number would have set alarm bells ringing!

I filled in the details and put things like emailscam and Fraud Street in the address and names boxes! I still didn't send it though as it kept saying I hadnt filled everything in.

Should I forward this email to Ebay?

divadee

Just had one of these this morning saying that someone was trying to access my account and place listings and that they had heard from my bank that amounts were being asked for from my credit card! I knew immediately it was a scam. Even if I hadnt realised, the fact that it asked for my pin number would have set alarm bells ringing!

I filled in the details and put things like emailscam and Fraud Street in the address and names boxes! I still didn't send it though as it kept saying I hadnt filled everything in.

Should I forward this email to Ebay?

i would forward it to them. I forward every spoof e-mail from ebay onto them.

HTH