New Wrinkle on an eBay Scam

For several months there has been a scammer who starts items on eBay with all of the warning signs - don't bid, send me an email at my address, etc. One of the items has been an FD 800mm f5.6, which I have some interest in. Even though I know its a scam I usually look at the description and perhams put it on my watch list. eBay has done a pretty good job of identifying them and cancelling them before anyone gets scammed.

But yesterday, a new wrinkle appeared - when I clicked on the item in my search list, a screen popped up with "Login to eBay". I knew I was already logged in, but stranger things have happened. But there was something fishy about this, so I didn't go there. I messed around with it, thinking it might be bogus and found that if you leave the fields blank and click on the "Login" button you see that the item has been removed by eBay.

Apparently the scammers are getting more sophisticated, so watch out for this one. If you pt your eBay userid and password into their screen they can get it for their own use.

Have Fun,

Same thing happens with Paypal. I got an email yesterday to an email account that doesn't even have a paypal account with. Stating that my transaction was completed, a receipt. At the bottom it said something along the lines of if you did not authotize this please login. Which takes you to some New Zealand website from looking at the status bar and properties of the link.

Hmm seems to me that ebay would have a simple solution to that. Don't allow html in th add.

That would seem to be the simple solution, but as we all know the hackers are getting more sophisticated by the minute. When I played around with this one, it seems that the ad is displayed for a brief time (1/10 of a second or less), and then the bogus login screen pops up. I almost entered the info on it the first time I saw it, and if I wasn't in the mindset of looking at a scam ad I might have done it.

So be alert - the bad guys are getting more sneaky.

Have Fun,

I recently sold my 20D on the bay, and someone used the ask a question function asking me to verify my listing was the same as on such and such site. I copied the link into a new browser and was taken to what looked like an ebay signin screen, but it wasn't secure. I entered a screen name of ur2lame and a password phrase I can't repeat here, and it let me in. Don't know if person who asked the question was the owner of the web site, so I let it slide.

Thanks for the heads up on this one.

A good rule of thumb with eBay is to always log into the site using www.ebay.com (or whatever your local site is). The same goes with PayPal as well


Never click on links in the emails, even if you're fairly sure it's fine - it's just far safer to get into the habit of going to the mail website and logging in there. Any email from eBay will be mirrored within eBay itself (that way, you know it's genuine).

Just to draw this back a little - the OP was related to already being on www.ebay.com and not responding to emails.

Have Fun,

I hate the internet.