New twist on fake Ebay emails

Item number is even bogus, you would think they could at least use a real item number. Sales ending in the last 30 days should still come up.

It tells you to click the Respond Now button to reply, and that the email cannot be replied to using the reply of your email program. Put the cursor on the "Respond Now" button and see what the real link is that you are going to!!!!! !! Some long complicated address, nothing to do with Ebay of course. I expanded the headder, and it appears to have come from Japan.

As with all Ebay and PayPal spoofs, I forwarded it to [email protected] (you send paypal ones to [email protected])

This is quite different from the usual, "your account is suspended" emails I usually see.

Beware. Assume all Ebay and Paypal emails are fake unless you know for sure otherwise.

Charles

If it doesn't, I forward the email to eBay's fraud investigation unit.

First one said that I had bought something from somebody and my paypal account had been billed $440.00 or something like that. Had links in the email I could follow if I disputed the charge, etc.

Second one said something about a new "contact" address had been added to my paypal account. Again, same thing, had links you could click on.

Didn't click on or respond in any way to either one. Instead I opened a new window on the puter, went directly to paypal and logged into my account that way. No recent activity was shown of course.

Went back to email and forwarded both emails to "spoof@paypal(dot)com" and within a short time recieved back confirmation from paypal saying it was bogus.

I got a similar one about six weeks ago. The person who sent it said that he would report me to eBay unless I sent the item he had bought from me. Even though I have never sold anything on eBay, my initial response was to reply immediately. It seemed like a mistake that would be simple to clear up.

Luckily, I decided to think about it a little more before responding. After that it didn't take long to start feeling that it might not be an honest mistake. I contacted eBay's security section and forwarded the message to them. The next day they informed me that it was a hoax. I'll bet the point wasn't just to play a little trick on me.

I'd like to get a chance to meet someone who cheats people for a living so I could explain to him why he shouldn't do that. Eventually he'd see things my way.

All the best, Stan

My daughter got an email from Clydesdale Bank in Great Britain saying she won �1,000,000 Sterling as a Microsoft user. Before asking DAD, she answered the email questions regarding address, bank account, phone #, etc, with the word "none". A return email said to send $1700 to start the process to get the money. The phone number in the original email is +44-702-3059-025. The 44 is Britain, but I cannot find any city with 702. If the number is called where will it be? If the email link is put in the browser, it's no good. If you click on it how does it get to another computer? It's all very confusing.

What they get is something similar to what I received. It has a notice that you cannot reply to the email directly and need to click on the respond now button to send the reply. The respond now button will if you follow it (I did not) take you to a fake log in page where you "log in" to Ebay to send your message. Thats when they gotcha user ID and password, unless you want to play games with them and give a fake ID and password of your own to mess with them.

The other aspect of this is that if you replied directly using your email program, then they know they have a live one (you) and will continue to send your address more junk trying to get you to give up valuable info. Many times the senders don't have a clue if the email addresses they are sending to are any good or not, but by replying to any email you have just verified to them that you are an active address, ripe for more junk.

Charles

I ask questions all the time, and I know who the seller is when I get a response. So far I've had no trouble. If I need to reply to them I use regular email by pasting the address in the Yahoo browser. I only need to "sign in" to ebay if the computer was turned off over night, and before I ask a question or bid the first time. I have Yahoo which has all my email on its computer. They say that I can open the email without the sender knowing it, but then if I clink on a link, it goes to a different computer.

Slowpoke