Attempted Fraud on my Wife's EBay Account (vanity)

10/6/2003

[gitmo]

I got home from work, and my wife took my youngest son to Cub Scouts. (His 2nd meeting: he's SO PROUD).

I browsed FreeRepublic for a while, and then went to check my email. My dear wife had forwarded an email from purported to be from EBay. It had the EBay icon and looked official. It said:

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Dear eBay user,

As stated in the User Agreement, Section 5.1, we may request you to change you password. Because of security reasons and for your saftey, please understand the situation and be so kind to change your password. Please acces the following link to change your password : http://xxx5.xxxxx.com/xx-xxx/eBayxxxxx.dll?RegisterShow .



We thank you for your cooperation.

Respectfully,
Customer Support (Trust and Safety Department)

eBay Inc

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(I've altered the URL so no one will accidently go there.)

When I passed my mouse over the hyperlink, I noticed the URL in my status bar didn't match the URL visible in the link.

I went to ebay and found their fraud dept. I forwarded them a copy of the email and they responded within 15 minutes. They said this was indeed a fraudulent email not at all connected with ebay. They referred me to their identity theft page. Apparently this was a new one to them and they're investigating it.

When Mrs Gitmo got home, I asked her if she had done anything with the email. She said she had changed our password. She had done this on the bogus website.

I've changed her ebay password, her "secret hints", as well as her PayPal stuff and I've notified our credit card company. (I don't think they could get any credit card info, but better safe than sorry.)

Ebay says they NEVER ask for any password, credit card, or personal information in email. And you should never go to ebay through a hyperlink in an email. The bogus site looked like an official ebay site. I checked it out.

It looks to me like I beat these anal sphincters to our accounts. I hope that posting this will protect someone else.

[fqued]

I sell antiquarian books on eBay (100% rating, by the way).
PayPal is a VERY GOOD way to pay:
1) since you are paying by credit card, you have their protections, and can refuse payment if cheated.
2) PayPal has its own protections, also.

Paypal does charge a fee to the sellers, not buyers, but it's a great way for transactions.

Note on eBay seller ratings: NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM A SELLER WITH A RATING BELOW ABOUT 96-98%! Why? because I believe that only about 1 in 5 people who were displeased actually leave negative feedback. thus 2% negative actually means about 10% of people were dissatisfied. A 96% rating would mean that 20% of buyers were dissatisfied.

[LayoutGuru2]

If you are using Outlook Express as your e-mail client, just go to File->Properties while the message is selected, then go to the Details tab and finally choose 'Message Source...". This will let you see the raw source of the message. If you see '(Misconfigured Sender)' at the end of the first line then you'll know the message needs to go to the trash bin. I get a couple of these each month. By the time I get around to reading most of them the target IP address is no longer valid. When I do get a live one I love to throw a bunch of port probes their way in case they are paying attention, hoping they might get a little nervous that someone is on to them.

[wardaddy]

Yeah...this seller was fairly new....had about 30 sales...no negatives.

About the time when after a week or so and lying e-mails from her and our check had been cashed then she got flooded with negatives and it was too late.

Like I said, I wish they had kept her info up just so we could have coordinated with the other victims.

[Valpal1]

If you paid via Paypal funds, you can do a chargeback for non delivery if you file with 30 days. They only return what they are able to recover from the seller's PayPal account.

If you via PayPal by charging it to a credit card, you can do a chargeback though your CC company and get a full refund for non delivery without Paypals help or approval.

If you paid via check/money order, you are screwed. This website: http://www.mindspring.com/%7Ebookdealers/ripoff.html will tell you steps you can take to file criminal complaints against non performing sellers.

[IpaqMan]

As you rightly did, ALWAYS check the actual hyperlink URL.

When in doubt, type in the actual EBAY URL and login manually, avoiding the email.

[FlyVet]

And, is there a better system than POW for getting rid of pop-up's?

I used to use Popup Stopper, which worked ok. But thanks to various Freepers, I went to the Mozilla browser. It does a really good job of blocking both popups and unneeded cookies. That, along with regularly updated Windows and antivirus programs, Zone Alarm, and SpyBot, I feel fairly secure (knock on wood). As far as blocking spam, I'm sure there are some expert Freepers who can tell you how, but I'm not one of them.

[wardaddy]

Thanks...excellent link!!!!

Man FR is always such a plethora of good info isn't it!

[Swordmaker]

The negatives for this seller have to do with people who don't bother to read the sellers terms of sale. Buying from this organization is a gamble. The items for sale are returned goods that retail buyers have returned to retail stores for whatever reason or discontinued merchandise.

Many times buyers return goods that are perfectly good... other times they ARE defective. Regardless of the reason, large bulk retailers generally do not try to resell returned goods to the public, nor do they attempt to repair or even return the merchandise to the manufacturer because it is not worth the time. Instead they are sold for pennies on the dollar to organiztions like "bargainland-liquidaters" who then take a picture, write a simple description and put the stuff up for auction with a starting bid of $1. This includes stuff from paper back books to high-end computers... everything is $1 starting. Some is junk... some works perfectly. "You pays your money and you takes your chances" and you don't complain when you get the short end of the stick.

I have bought from such organizations and have both won and lost... but mostly I have won. I have received merchandise with old address labels for Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Costco, Best-Buy, etc., from such resellers. Some was junk, which went promptly into my garbage can, but some was first class merchandise that I still use... including my digital camera, my DVD player, and my CD-RW drive.

Those that are claiming "mis-representation" and talking class action lawsuits are just crying "sour grapes."

[js1138]

Yes, I got one of those and forwarded it, along with the header information, to abuse@ebay.com and my IP.

Even more interesting, my eBay account was hijacked a couple of weeks ago. EBay caught it and suspended the account almost immediately. They fixed it pretty fast. Must be a lot of this going around.

[js1138]

LOL

[COUNTrecount]

For those who have had problems with PayPal....

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

[E Rocc]

I got this one the other day and forwarded it to them too. It will no doubt fool some people.

-Eric