eBay scam - please take care

MalMonroe

Hi, I've just received an email purporting to be from eBay Inc about an invoice I need to pay. Screenshot attached.

Although I have sold something recently, I have paid all relevant charges.

If anyone does receive such an invoice, I'd advise caution - and please check with your eBay account first to see if you have a message on there. 

If the email is a scam, as mine is, then there won't be any message about an outstanding invoice. 

The sum is small but if many eBay users pay even a fiver, the scammers will be many squids in. 

I've reported this to gmail, eBay and PayPal. 

marcia_

 I think in entering your card details to pay they can access more than the fiver. 

 Other email & txt scams like this see people's bank accounts emptied. 

MalMonroe

marcia_ said:

 I think in entering your card details to pay they can access more than the fiver. 

 Other email & txt scams like this see people's bank accounts emptied. 

Yes, of course, thank you!  I was worried because I thought this email looked so real.

MalMonroe

MalMonroe said:

Hi, I've just received an email purporting to be from eBay Inc about an invoice I need to pay. Screenshot attached.

Although I have sold something recently, I have paid all relevant charges.

If anyone does receive such an invoice, I'd advise caution - and please check with your eBay account first to see if you have a message on there. 

If the email is a scam, as mine is, then there won't be any message about an outstanding invoice. 

The sum is small but if many eBay users pay even a fiver, the scammers will be many squids in. 

I've reported this to gmail, eBay and PayPal. 

Edited to add :  of course, marcia_ is correct in that whole bank accounts can be emptied. 

Also wanted to say that having received the email, reporting and deleting it, I've changed my password and have added two part verification to my account, for extra safety. And have 'logged out' properly too, which is something I've not always done. Hackers are very clever. 

marcia_

 Good job you noticed, some are pretty good and look exactly like the real thing and anyone can fall for it. 

soolin

I’m be surprised if a scammer is expecting people to fall for a PayPal scam, when eBay dropped the use of PayPal as a partner a couple of years ago - that should be the major clue that this was an fake as soon as it was received. 

It also supposes that the seller is signed up for some eBay charity scheme, and OP if you thought it looked a bit genuine I assume you are in fact signed up for such a scheme , so check out exactly what you signed up for and proceed extremely carefully and definitely don’t follow any links. If you have signed up to anything charitable then it should be self explanatory, if not then treat it as a scam. 

Spoonie_Turtle

soolin said:

I’m surprised a scammer is expecting people to fall for a PayPal scam, when eBay dropped the use of PayPal as a partner a couple of years ago - that should be the major clue that this was an obvious fake as soon as it was received. 

Buyers can still pay by PayPal so a seller who's maybe not fully clued up could easily forget that, especially if they also buy on eBay using PayPal themselves.  That's what scams rely on, people not being fully cognisant of the ins and outs of whatever service the scam is pretending to be.

Plus for the charity schemes, with eBay glitches a less confident seller might just assume eBay signed them up, or perhaps assume that they signed themselves up without realising.

prowla

Hover your mouse over any buttons/links (but don't click); you'll see if it's going to PayPal or not.

But generally don't click on links in emails; instead login to the site (ebay) and see what it's got to say.

se2020

Did you sell something after ticking the "donate a % to charity" recently.
I had one of those emails today and the amount on it is correct for the one single item I sold with a 10% charity donation on the listing.

I've logged into ebay and there is nothing about it there but looking at the fees for the sold item the 10% donation has not been charged to me.
There is a discount on the fvf for the auction though which is nice.

Logging into my paypal account does indeed show this invoice so I'm pretty sure it's genuine. 

Safe way would be to log into PayPal and pay from there rather than click on the email link I suppose.

se2020

Ps, I didn't (and am not) signed up for any sort of ebay charity thing.
I was selling a single item at auction and wanted to donate 10% of the sale price to charity. 
There was a box to tick when listing the item and then I could choose what % I donated.
Then a list of charity's came up and I chose one.
The item sold on the 29th sep and this "invoice" came through today. Looks identical to the OP except for the amount which is 10% of the sale price (excluding p&p) so I would guess it's something you sold a few weeks ago for £55 (if you had it set at 10%)

soolin

se2020 said:

Ps, I didn't (and am not) signed up for any sort of ebay charity thing.
I was selling a single item at auction and wanted to donate 10% of the sale price to charity. 
There was a box to tick when listing the item and then I could choose what % I donated.
Then a list of charity's came up and I chose one.
The item sold on the 29th sep and this "invoice" came through today. Looks identical to the OP except for the amount which is 10% of the sale price (excluding p&p) so I would guess it's something you sold a few weeks ago for £55 (if you had it set at 10%)

The 10% donation counts as a charity auction (as the charity benefits) so that actually checks out. 

However I can’t find any mention of this on the eBay discussion boards or other forums, very strange. 

Assuming this page is in date, then the email appears to be genuine, https://charity.ebay.co.uk/help/seller 
although I am still not happy with the email asking for people to log in and pay, as that doesn’t fit in at all with the eBay safety mantra of never clicking links! 

Just be careful, log into PayPal using a clean link and of course if you haven’t signed up to the charity scheme, then ignore the email.