I consider myself pretty wise to all the scams that I come across on the web. One of my email accounts for instance must be on every spammer and blaggers list known to man. Its an old account that I rarely send anything from but keep open in case anyone from years gone by tries to contact me. It must be daily that I get a phishing email or scam of some sort in this account and I can normally spot them a mile off (dodgy links and badly designed). Until today!
I had just listed something on Ebay and received the confirmation from them as usual a minute or so after the listing. Following that I immediately received an email in this ‘suspect’ account, that I would have originally used when I signed up to Ebay, telling me my account had been suspended for unauthorised listings and that I should contact them if that wasn’t the case.
Fortunately the quality, free, email client Thunderbird, flagged this as a potential scam and I thought twice before clicking the link. I logged into Ebay from the favourite in my browser (no problems, account wasn’t suspended) and forwarded the email to the spoof@ebay.co.uk address. I immediately received an automated response and thought that would be the last of it. Less than five minutes later I received another (genuine) email from EBay confirming the scam, thanking me for the email and reiterating the standard security procedures that we should all adhere to with emails and genuine online businesses.
Full marks to Ebay for the prompt response, though whether anything gets done and they are able to prevent this dodgy site from luring less suspicious people that’s another matter!
Here are Ebays security recommendations which though obvious, are defiantly worth repeating.
"We advise you to be very cautious of email messages that ask you to submit information such as your credit card number or your password. EBay and PayPal will never ask you for sensitive personal information such as passwords, bank account or credit card numbers and Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) in an email. If you ever need to provide information to eBay or PayPal please open a new Web browser, type www.ebay.co.uk or www.paypal.com/uk, and click on the "site map" link located at the top the page or other site menus to access the page you need. If you have any doubt about whether an email message is from eBay or PayPal, please forward it immediately to spoof@ebay.co.uk or spoof@paypal.co.uk and do not respond to it or click on any of the links in the email message. Please do not change the subject line or forward the email as an attachment."
