Ebay ID hyjacking

[ron]

I came across a new and rather clever attempt at ID hyjacking on Ebay last night;

If you are searching for something and you click on an item that takes your fancy to get details this opens an Ebay sign-on page, this sign on page is very convincing, the only giveaway is that the address on the header isn't quite right and I was already signed in anyway, so beware! Ebay eventually pulled it after a couple of hours but I wonder how many IDs got hyjacked in that time?
Ron

[baggo]

Hi Ron,

I use Ebay a lot and this sort of thing is getting very common. Another scam is bogus sellers who are re-listing items which have already been sold some time before. The listings are exact copies of the original genuine one but with the new sellers ID etc. They are usually only of 24 hours duration and the sellers are often based in the USA. This has happened a lot recently with several steam locos. At one point the same loco was listed 4 times! They don't stay on for long though and soon get pulled.

If you are ever asked to follow a link to another page, e.g. a page which asks for your account details etc, invariably it will be a scam. One sure way to tell is to hold the mouse cursor over the link and look at the address that comes up at the bottom of the screen. It will almost certainly be a totally different address to what the link says. I get umpteen emails saying that so and so bank is carrying out a software upgrade and can I please go to their site and confirm my account details. Obviously it's a scam but there are people who fall for it.

Ebay and the internet are great places but you need to keep your wits about you all the time nowadays.

John

[gwrfan]

Hi Ron, John and others,

I'm a relatively newbie when it comes to eBay, but I've bought a few small, mainly Model Engineering type, items.

Yesterday I was unable to sign on to my eBay account, and was advised that my password had been changed. My eBay email account is not my main AOL user account, and when I logged into the other AOL account, there was an email from eBay. Or was it? Of course, as soon as I tried to open the email, one of those warning notices came up: 'Do you know who sent this to you?'. How could I really know without opening it? Well, I had no option, and opened the email, which explained that due to recent activities there was a possibility that my account had been compromised. To cut a long story short, I went through all the actions, and changed password, and AOL email password too, and eventually accessed my eBay account. Once in, and on my eBay page, there were tow security alerts, telling me about the password compromise, etc, etc. Now how on earth was I supposed to read those warnings when I couldn't access my account?

I'm grateful that you have raised this topic here, and now feel better for reading your postings. I too saw those locos for sale, some in Italy and some in France if I remember correctly. Now I am aware of this scam I will be much more vigilant than I was before. ;D

Thanks, Guys.

Regards from Cornwall.

Geoff

[Phil Sutton]

God to see you're on the ball,Geoff.

Phil

[gwrfan]

'God' sees everything, young Phil, hehe ;D

Went for my head scan yesterday, but they couldn't find anything inside, LOL

[ron]

Model engineering on Ebay seems to be relatively scam free so far but I'm also interested in old Leica rangefinder cameras and it's really bad just now for fraud, you get hyjacked IDs, Chinese scammers with 10 dodgy feedback and very valuable and rare items posted by newly registered IDs with no feedback [yeah right].

The standard fraud auction is;
Expensive item at a very attractive price
Newly registered ID with zero feedback [10 if they're Chinese!]
Short Auction [usually 3 days or less]
Buyers ID private [to prevent the scambusters wrecking it]
Vague payment and postage instructions.
Basically they try to appeal to people's greed!

The hy-jacked ID advert is similar to above except they ask you to contact them via an e-mail link for Buy it Now price

If you get a 1 day aution for a valuable item it's 99% likely to be fraud, and remember the old adage, if it looks too good to be true it probably is.

If you see an auction you think is dodgy here is the contact to report it
pages.ebay.co.uk/help/contact_us/_base/result_4_8_7.html

Ron

[modeng2000]

Thanks to this discussion I know why I have been receiving several emails in Chinese characters. I asked a question of an eBay listing but before I had an answer the item was removed by eBay. Now I know the reason
The best thing to come out of this is that it is very easy to pick out the spam.

John

[baggo]

I've just received yet another email from a site claiming to be Ebay asking me to confirm my registration details otherwise my account may be suspended. The first giveaway is that the email addressed me by my email address rather than my real name (genuine emails from Ebay always address you by your real name).
When I checked the link by hovering the mouse over it, the address that came up was ebay.com.wiscr.us/ rather than just ebay.com proving it to be a false link.

John

[ron]

John
These seem to come in batches, I was getting plagued with them several months ago then they just stopped [touch wood] maybe if they don't get a bite they give up and try elsewhere?
Ron