An old scam has been polished and is now circulating again. You may receive an e-mail from eBay with a subject of "Question about Item -- Respond Now" or something similar. The message appears to be generated by an eBay seller and suggests you respond. To do so, you would expect to click on the link within the e-mail message to go to eBay, log in and then post your reply.
There's only one problem: when you click on the link and sign in, it's not eBay's site. Oh, it looks like eBay but it is not. You just entered your user name and password into a rip-off artist's "look alike" site. He is now free to take your user name and password and buy all sorts of things in your name!
Here is the text of the e-mail I received recently:
Question about Item -- Respond Now eBay
eBay sent this message on behalf of an eBay member via My Messages. Responses sent using email will go to the eBay member directly and will include your email address. Click the Respond Now button below to send your response via My Messages (your email address will not be included).
Question from nukem21
Item: (6831805721)
This message was sent while the listing was active.
barnsley1105 is a potential buyer.
Hi,
i have sent your item today,please let me know when you will get it ....and please don`t forgot to leave my feedback
Thanks
Respond to this question in My Messages.
Respond Now
Item Details
Item number: 6436472319
End date: 29-Oct-05 18:56:12 BST
All of this was sent in HTML and certainly looked like a message from eBay. While I don't remember buying anything on eBay recently, I certainly was tempted to click on the link to check out the possible purchase.
When clicking on the link, however, did not take me to www.ebay.com. Instead, I was taken to a site identified only by its I.P. address: http://61.129.15.206. While the web site certainly looks like eBay, it could be in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan or most anywhere else in the world. I elected to not enter my user name or password.
Copying the look of eBay or any other web site is easy to do. Only a little bit of computer skill is required by the rip-off artist.
Looking at the e-mail, there are several clues that make it look suspicious. First of all, no description of the item is offered. In fact, the con artists wants you to be curious and log on in order to seek more information.
Next, the ending date shown was nearly three months ago.
The text of the message says, "This message was sent while the listing was active." In fact, the item was not active; the auction finished nearly three months ago. To be sent while the listing was active, the message would have to be sent before the auction end.
Finally, the ending time is shown as "29-Oct-05 18:56:12 BST." I am assuming that BST stands for "British Summer Time." In fact, for U.S. users of eBay, all times are always shown in Pacific Standard Time (PST) in the winter months or Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) in the summer. The use of "BST" should be a red flag.
Should you receive an automated message from eBay or anyone else asking you to log on, be suspicious. When you do click on a link, if it takes you to any web site shown as http:// followed by four sets of numbers separated by periods, abort immediately! You aren't where you think you are.
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