eBay Scam Warning

[Jeff Hess]

As I have maintained for a long time, there are just as many scam buyers as sellers.

Here is the rest of the scenario. They will get a new bidder name or two (or 3 or 10). Then they will bid the item up to way over what it is worth.

Then when the item does not sell, they contact your underbidders and say "The winner was a zero feedbacker and he renegged so you can buy it for the same amount.

This does several things. Ruins your own auction, gets the price up .. and gives him the names of several people who want one.

We understand the FBI is investigating those who do this type of thing.

Jeff Hess

JPH

[Robert_Antiques]

Hi Jeff
I agree with you about some of the Bidding That is going on. Especially when you see an unrealistic Price.One thing for sure it is brining a lot of people into the selling market Thinking theuy will get a good Price.In Canada you can hardly find a railroad Watch. (David it again is buyer beware).I can tell you not all those emails may be phony There is also a lot of honest sellers ,looking for another way of selling other than ebay.I once bid on a watch that had a reserve on it . I did not get it but I did get another email from the seller who was legitement he asked if I wanted to buy a collection of his . I checked him out very carefully and I can tell you he was an Honest Gentleman and I visited him and bought his collection and I am very happy, So you never know
Robert

[fermenthaus]

I received a similar offer from an Italian last evening. I had bid on a Waltham Siderial - and shorthly after he offered me the identical watch for 550 Euros. I checked his handle and it is owned by by somebody in Kentucky! If these clowns with these schemes put as much ingenuity into legitimate persuits they would be wealthy...

Desmond Lundy

[Tom McIntyre]

I received an email recently that looked like it was from eBay, telling me there was a problem with my user information. It gave a link to a web page that also looked like eBay. I nearly fell for this and "updated" my information since I had recently changed my email address.

I had actually entered my handle and password before my nose finally woke up and I realized it smelled bad.

I have been doing network stuff for almost 30 years and if I can fall for this in an unguarded moment, lots of newer users certainly do.

I suspect there are a lot of stolen eBay identities floating around.

Tom McIntyre
NAWCC 2nd VP
Tommy the JOAT's Web

[Jerry Freedman]

I received an e-mail telling me some flowers had been charged to my AOL account.If I wanted it removed, I had to send them my screen name and password. They are trying all accounts, not just e-Bay. I reported it.

[Ralph]

Check this out:

<A HREF="http://www.msnbc.com/news/957191.asp?0cv=TA01" TARGET=_blank>

Scam News Item</A>

[Tom Chaudoir]

When you discover a scam, gather as much information as you can. Report it to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center.

"The Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C).

IFCC's mission is to address fraud committed over the Internet. For victims of Internet fraud, IFCC provides a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities of a suspected criminal or civil violation. For law enforcement and regulatory agencies at all levels, IFCC offers a central repository for complaints related to Internet fraud, works to quantify fraud patterns, and provides timely statistical data of current fraud trends."


Regards,

Tom Chaudoir
Milwaukee, WI
America
150429

[Jeff Hess]

Not is the FBI investigating this but the US Proecuting Attorneys are as well.

This is bigger than you know.

Scam buyers are everywhere and do much more damage than scam sellers.

Bigger money in it too.

JPH

[Steve Kosovich]

I too have received about a half dozen of those "update info" emails and send them all to spoof@ebay.com and I get the same "form" email response each time so now I just delete it.
I feel nothing will be done about it.
One thing, these fakers do an excellent job of reproducing Ebay's logos etc. so it looks real.just remember that Ebay will NEVER ask for personal information by an email.

Steve Kosovich

[Tom McIntyre]

Steve, the kicker that almost got me is that they provided a link as eBay often does that took me to a site with an address that looked like it was in the eBay domain, with a form to enter my information.

This was the best piece of this kind of cracker human engineering that I have seen. The only thing that saved me was that it really did not make sense. It had been a long time since I had sold anything on eBay.

Tom McIntyre
NAWCC 2nd VP
Tommy the JOAT's Web

[Kenny D]

I have also received several of these bogus "update" emails purporting to be from PayPal. They look very legit. Fortunately I have the habit of never sending any personal info over the internet unless it is a transaction or procedure that I instigate. I never provide info through an email link. I always go to subject site by entering the URL that I know is correct and inquire as to authenticity of the email. This precaution saved me in this instance.

[Jeff Salmon]

Some of our members may not be aware of an article that was in the Maine Antique Digest a couple of months ago. It appears that some sellers are hijacking photos (and sometimes even the complete description) from other sites (antiques, and the like) and then offering the items on E-bay and other places (even their own site). The article suggests that all of your photographs be watermarked to prevent this kind of theft.

Many of the sellers were in Indonesia, apparently, however this problem can easily be done anywhere.

Hi, from Monterey.

Jeff

[time4now]

There is a real simple way to know if an e-mail from E-bay is real or not......Unfortunetly I don't remember what it is :frown: Our local New's station had a piece about it a few weeks back but I can't find it on there webeite.....I think it involved the address not having a WWW or HTTP or something as simple as that......If I can find it I'll post it. I always go to the website to conf. any e-mail regardless what it involves (and I never open attachments).

Member Chapter #1
NAWCC Member # 159449

"scuse mi spelin"

[Peter Cox]

If IE hover over the link, the real address will show on the info bar at the bottom, typically if spoof it will show as an ip address and a page on that address. You can try pinging the address in a cmd windows with a -a option and this may give you the name of the site back e.g. ping -a 66.135.192.87 (this is the www.ebay.site) or tracing the ip address, tracert xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx will give you a path to the site that will hint as to where it actually is. You can also look at the properties of the email that will give you a backtrace path to where it actually originated in the email system.

[Barry Parker]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Tom McIntyre:
I received an email recently that looked like it was from eBay, telling me there was a problem with my user information. It gave a link to a web page that also looked like eBay. I nearly fell for this and "updated" my information since I had recently changed my email address.

I had actually entered my handle and password before my nose finally woke up and I realized it smelled bad.

I have been doing network stuff for almost 30 years and if I can fall for this in an unguarded moment, lots of newer users certainly do.

I suspect there are a lot of stolen eBay identities floating around.

Tom McIntyre
NAWCC 2nd VP
http://www.AWCo.org<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi Tom,You may wish to watch out for this one as it seems to be going around lately.
Microsoft has a web page at;
http://www.microsoft.com/security/an...icate_mail.asp
The article is entitled;


How to Tell If a Microsoft
Security-Related Message Is
Genuine
It shows an example of a bogus message which is identical to one I received last week.

It arrives with an attachment named;
pack7999.exe[106KB]
and looks like a genuine notice.

The email header shows;
Received: (qmail 3963 invoked from network); 7 Oct 2003 14:49:57 -0000
Received: from gw02.mail.saunalahti.fi (195.197.172.116)
by nero.hotkey.net.au with SMTP; 7 Oct 2003 14:49:57 -0000

Received: from ehdk (unknown [213.192.169.128])
by gw02.mail.saunalahti.fi (Postfix) with SMTP
id AD0F84E4C58; Tue, 7 Oct 2003 17:48:32 +0300 (EEST)
From: "Microsoft Corporation Customer Services" &lt;gjjxkdzsb-puofltoj@confidence_msdn.com&gt;
To: "Consumer" &lt;okfmfxh-amilkheh@confidence_msdn.com&gt;
SUBJECT: Latest Microsoft Critical Upgrade
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="glhvyjueruslq"
Message-Id: &lt;20031007144832.AD0F84E4C58@gw02.mail.saunalaht i.fi&gt;
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 17:48:32 +0300 (EEST)

Barry Parker