I received this phishing email yesterday:
It looks like an official email. I actually clicked the link, but Eudora alerted me that the URL I was clicking on was different from the one listed. That didn’t throw up any red flags because lots of companies use third party emailers, but for whatever reason, I decided not to continue on and just typed “ebay.com” into my browser. It was only then that it occurred to me that this might be a fake email. Some signs:
- The email address they sent the message to is not the address I use with ebay.
- The mailer is a program called The Bat!, which I believe is a bulk email program.
- My name isn’t eBay.
- That credit card number’s completely wrong.
Careful out there.
Rule number one. If a site has a problem with your account especially when credit cards are involved, will not send you a link to correct it.
Rule number two. If it feels like a scam, then it probably is. You did the right thing by going to the website directly and not by the provided link.
You were lucky!
If you had continued, you would have been at a screen where it would have asked you for all your personal info. Name, Address, SSN, CC #s, and probably bank account numbers as well. Once they had all that – they would have gone to town, and you would have had at a minimum – 6 to 8 months of hell digging out from the identity theft.
Fortunately, this has not happened to me. But I see it at work quite a bit (I work in the CC transaction transportation industry).
I am sure that eBay would like to see the email you received. You might want to contact their security/fraud dept. and see if they are aware of the scam.
Unfortunately, the only way to protect identity theft is to always be skeptical.
Wait a minute…I thought you were eBay! Who the fuck are you then???
I send all of those to spoof[at]ebay.com and they take care of them.
i get those all the time. the first time, i almost fell for it too… but i’d realized that i’d never signed up with my yahoo account. i’ve forwarded quite a few them to ebay already. when will it stop ???