[PatrioticCowboy]

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[PatrioticCowboy]

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[PatrioticCowboy]

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[PatrioticCowboy]

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[Swordmaker]

I have reported over 40 hijacked eBay accounts to eBay's Safe Harbor fraud detail in the past two weeks.

These hijacked accounts have been popping up offering Macintosh G5 dual processor computers for sale with immediate shipping. The Dual G5 will not even ship from Apple until mid-October! The same sellers will also be offering the hard to get Nikon digital SLR, Super-high speed PCs,

Each of the sellers had been previously selling something totally non-computer related... often the "sellers" have high positive eBay ratings from their previous activities.

The computers are offered with "Buy It Now!" prices that are less than half the retail value and include many accessories that increase the "deal" the buyer will get... if anything is ever shipped. Some of these scam deals are offering over $5000 of new equipment for the bargain price of $1900... one scammer offers the Dual G5 ($2995),8 gigabytes of APPLE brand Ram ($4800), a 20" Cinema Display ($1299), a 23" Cinema Display ($2499), Fiber Channel PCI card ($500), 40 Gig iPad ($400), Klipsch ProMedia Surround Sound 5.1 speaker set ($350), Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme base station, card, and modem ($500)... a total of over $8500 for a bargain "buy it now" price of $2299... and he would throw in shipping anywhere for free! This seller, before offering several of these impossible packages, was selling used clothing and had a 148 100% positive eBay rating.

One scammer claims that if the auction goes over $450, he will stop the auction immediately and ship the computer to the first person over that amount... but "it will take a longer time for shipping and delivery because I am a drop shipper, which allows me to sell these computers at such a deep discount."

Another suggest the buyer buy TWO!

Often, the buyer seems to have moved to another continent... people who had selling used CDs and books from New Jersey is suddenly offering large numbers of "too-good-to-be-true" impossible to get computers from the Netherlands... or the UK... of Australia. Sometimes the item location is listed as New York, but the price is listed in Australian dollars.

All of these listings were removed by eBay after I notified them of the fraudulent nature... but it doesn't stop them... identical ads appear just hours later with another eBayer's hijacked account.

I have one problem with eBay's commitment to fighting this type of fraud. They make it extremely HARD to find a way to report suspicious listings to them... it is buried under many layers of webpages and options. It took me over an hour to find it the first time I saw one of these scam offerings.

[PatrioticCowboy]

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[PatrioticCowboy]

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[palmer]

Notwithstanding some technical problems like account hijacking, EBay spells the end of the state monopoly on contract enforcement. Essentially for the last 1000 years or so the state has held itself as the enforcer of good information and good behavior. Now that monopoly is threatened so of course they will highlight any fraud they find and try their hardest to regulate it.

[Maurice Tift]

Representatives from Ebay say spoofed e-mails are a serious problem and undermine costumers' confidence in doing business online.

I always fill out the forms in the spoofed Ebay messages:
Name: Mongoo Bloofus, Jr.
Bank Name: First Wiccan Security
work phone: (bogus area code)
home number: (more bogus)
email address: (hmmmm...... could get interesting here)
email password: ....

Maybe just use a recently created web based email account filled with lots of false leads.... the criminal could actually be caught when he trys to follow one of the false leads.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Ebay customers also sometimes receive e-mail messages that appear to be from Ebay, but are actually from someone trying to rip them off.

They're called "spoof" e-mails. They look authentic, carrying the Ebay logo and an Ebay return address.

They threaten to cancel customers' accounts if they don't reply with their account information.

This is old news, about 2 or 3 years old. Ebay has stated they NEVER e-mail you for personal information.

I would believe that the same people who fell for this also opened the virus attachments in the "I love you" virus e-mails.

[weatherFrEaK]

My wife's Ebay account was compromised last week along with her Yahoo! mail account, within 48 hours of each other. Different passwords on each and never a bogus email received requesting confidential info. Still no resolution from either Ebay or Yahoo! Her accounts are still hijacked. Their response time is extremely poor and, of course, it has to be something WE did on our end, not on their end. You never think it will happen to you, but when it does... No more Yahoo! or Ebay and we will share our experience with friends and family.