Registered: Apr 2002
Location: Houston, TX
Posts: 734

Ebay Spam

This message is half a warning, and half me venting. I got an email purporting to be from Ebay saying I needed to clear up a billing problem and to click on a link in the email leading to an ebay site. The URL said http://www.ebay.com/..... The HTML used to construct the email directed the click to the real link, which is on some server with no domain name. As you can imagine, this is a scam. When you get to the page, you are asked for the following (not exhaustive): Name, Address, Phone, Birthdate, Mother's Maiden Name, Credit Card #, Exp. Date, Checking account number and routing number, Ebay username, Ebay password. The page uses graphics and links lifted directly from Ebay so to probably 99% of the people out there they would think it was an Ebay page.

Of course if you fill this information in, you are ruining your life. Your life.

The nerve of these people is really frustrating. I just wish people were a little less trusting and others were a little less evil.

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<a href="http://www.kurtramsauer.com">KurtRamsauer.com</a>

Registered: Apr 2002
Location: Houston, TX
Posts: 734

Here is the email. I'm not going to post the URL lest someone think it's real. If you really really want the email out of curiosity (or if you're an investigator) email me at [email protected] and clearly state that you know the email I am to forward you is a fraud and that it isn't my creation.

Dear valued eBay member:
It has come to our attention that your eBay billing updates are
out of order. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your
online experience and update your billing records you will not run
into any future problems with the online service. However, failure
to update your records will result in account termination. Please
update your records by May 25th.


Once you have updated your account records your eBay session will not be
interrupted and will continue as normal. Failure to update will result in
cancellation of service, Terms of Service (TOS) violations or future billing
problems.

To update your eBay records click here:

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<a href="http://www.kurtramsauer.com">KurtRamsauer.com</a>

Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 3034

Yeah, Paypal (ironically now an eBay subsidiary) has a similar scam targetting its users. I'm sure eBay has a link to report such abuse (Paypal definitely does). The weird thing is that one of the Paypal scam emails I received was at an account that never had a Paypal account (as well as an account that does).

Registered: Apr 2002
Location: Houston, TX
Posts: 734

quote:

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Originally posted by Toby
Yeah, Paypal (ironically now an eBay subsidiary) has a similar scam targetting its users. I'm sure eBay has a link to report such abuse (Paypal definitely does). The weird thing is that one of the Paypal scam emails I received was at an account that never had a Paypal account (as well as an account that does).

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<a href="http://www.kurtramsauer.com">KurtRamsauer.com</a>

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: "Children are a gift from God, they are a reward"
Posts: 1049

They've been doing this for awhile. As a seller on eBay (gee I'm a POWER seller!) we get targeted all the time. When it first started it was very primitive. It's gotten very sophisticated now. My wife actually fell for one of their ploys (keep in mind that she's busy homeschooling 3 boys, pregnant - 8 weeks away from delivery, and doing a lot of the listing for our eBay business) and I had to do an emergency switch of all our passwords, etc. Less than an hour after I switched all our passwords, etc. they tried to access our accounts.

Ebay actually admits this stuff is going on now, for awhile I think they were hoping it would just go away.

Main thing to remember is to NEVER go to a site for Paypal, eBay, Your bank, etc. from a link in an email. Don't even copy it from the email and paste it into your browser. If you can't access it from your regular way of going to the site, it's bogus.

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"I am a debtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish."

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: "Children are a gift from God, they are a reward"
Posts: 1049

quote:

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Originally posted by KRamsauer
Yeah, I'm not sure I use this particular address for Ebay. I guess that makes sense, though, as Ebay will not give away it's member list. Of that doesn't mattter. As with all spam, sending out false positives (people who won't respond/people who don't have accounts) is basically free.

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__________________
"I am a debtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish."

Registered: Apr 2002
Location: Houston, TX
Posts: 734

quote:

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Originally posted by BobbyMike
They've been doing this for awhile. As a seller on eBay (gee I'm a POWER seller!) we get targeted all the time. When it first started it was very primitive. It's gotten very sophisticated now. My wife actually fell for one of their ploys (keep in mind that she's busy homeschooling 3 boys, pregnant - 8 weeks away from delivery, and doing a lot of the listing for our eBay business) and I had to do an emergency switch of all our passwords, etc. Less than an hour after I switched all our passwords, etc. they tried to access our accounts.

Ebay actually admits this stuff is going on now, for awhile I think they were hoping it would just go away.

Main thing to remember is to NEVER go to a site for Paypal, eBay, Your bank, etc. from a link in an email. Don't even copy it from the email and paste it into your browser. If you can't access it from your regular way of going to the site, it's bogus.

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<a href="http://www.kurtramsauer.com">KurtRamsauer.com</a>

Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 3034

quote:

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Originally posted by KRamsauer
This was especially dangerous because they wanted bank account info as well. Not just Ebay info.

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Registered: Apr 2002
Location: Houston, TX
Posts: 734

quote:

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Originally posted by Toby

Yeah, and they'll usually ask for a PIN under the assumption that most people recycle PINs and passwords.

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<a href="http://www.kurtramsauer.com">KurtRamsauer.com</a>