John Tapscott Posted January 30, 2006 Report Posted January 30, 2006 (edited) Today I received what looks like a real message from e-bay, the gist of which is below Hello, Dear user: Kimberly L Coffey has informed us that they have not yet received your payment for the following item: 1915 Amatuer SG Photo BATON ROUGE LA. Capitol Bldg. (#6219911642 It was sent to my personal email, and the ironic thing is that I have NEVER used ebay to sell or purchase anything. The message goes on to say that I will have some kind of strike against me if I do not rectify the situation immediately. Thanks to the warnings of my fellow Organissimo members I did not follow any of the links, but immediately placed it in the spam file. My question is: Do ebay and paypal and other legtimate firms try to track these guys down and put them out of action? Seems to me stuff like this could ultimately harm their business. Edited January 30, 2006 by John Tapscott Quote
Christiern Posted January 30, 2006 Report Posted January 30, 2006 I automatically bring up the extended headers and forward all junk like that to: webcomplaints@ora.fda.gov, spam@uce.gov, uce@ftc.gov and, when appropriate to pfizer, lillie, microsoft, adobe, etc. The important thing is to include the long headers. Quote
Dan Gould Posted January 30, 2006 Report Posted January 30, 2006 This is definitely a new one, but it is highly questionable to me that this would work very well as a fishing expedition. I think most people know what they've sold on ebay or are selling. For me its just too obvious a fishing expedition to give a second thought to. What I would be much more concerned about is whether its possible that your ebay account has been hacked and someone is selling, fraudulently, in your name. That would explain a legitimate email regarding a problem, if this person actually did "purchase" something from an auction that you ran. I'd go to ebay's website directly and check recent auctions. I'm not sure what "My Ebay" will display but I'd hate to find out that there are a bunch of listings of things you never sold. Quote
John Tapscott Posted January 30, 2006 Author Report Posted January 30, 2006 What I would be much more concerned about is whether its possible that your ebay account has been hacked and someone is selling, fraudulently, in your name. That would explain a legitimate email regarding a problem, if this person actually did "purchase" something from an auction that you ran. I'd go to ebay's website directly and check recent auctions. I'm not sure what "My Ebay" will display but I'd hate to find out that there are a bunch of listings of things you never sold. The point is that I have NEVER used ebay to run an auction. Nor have I ever purchased anything through ebay or even made a bid on anything. In fact, I don't think I've ever visited the ebay site, except maybe ages ago via a link. And the other point is this. Not only has Kimberley L. Coffey has not received payment for the item. Neither have I received the item I allegedly bought from this individual. The whole thing is backward. In most transactions, I pay, then individual sends the item. This reads if if the person sent the item before I paid, which is not the usual practice. Quote
Brownian Motion Posted January 30, 2006 Report Posted January 30, 2006 This is a common scam; I receive something like this a couple of times a week. The links in the email do not take you to ebay's site; they take you to a fake site where I assume they will try to divest you of your credit card or paypal information. If you respond by returning the email and telling them to screw-off, their consolation prize is your email address, which they will bombard in perpetuity with all sorts of unappetizing spam. Quote
John Tapscott Posted January 30, 2006 Author Report Posted January 30, 2006 their consolation prize is your email address, which they will bombard in perpetuity with all sorts of unappetizing spam. They apparently already have my email address. What cheeses me off is that it came to my PERSONAL email. Most of this crap comes to my business email, which can be found by the usual fishing practice of scanning websites. Quote
Dan Gould Posted January 30, 2006 Report Posted January 30, 2006 their consolation prize is your email address, which they will bombard in perpetuity with all sorts of unappetizing spam. They apparently already have my email address. What cheeses me off is that it came to my PERSONAL email. Most of this crap comes to my business email, which can be found by the usual fishing practice of scanning websites. Yeah, but spammers lists are loaded with fake emails. So when someone replies, or follows a link or does something to establish that the address is real, it becomes a prized email addy. Kinda like in the old days when the people who responded to direct mail tended to get more direct mail offers. Quote
Rooster_Ties Posted January 31, 2006 Report Posted January 31, 2006 (edited) A scam I just got at my work e-mail (from which I've never used Paypal at all, never!!!). From: www-data on behalf of PayPal Sent: Mon 1/30/2006 7:14 PM To: (Rooster's real name) Subject: Account Review Team PayPal is committed to maintaining a safe environment for its community of customers. To protect the security of your account, PayPal employs some of the most advanced security systems in the world and our anti-fraud teams regularly screen the PayPal system for unusual activity. We are contacting you because on 30 Jan 2006 our Account Review Team identified some unusual activity in your account. In accordance with PayPal's User Agreement and to ensure that your account has not been compromised, access to your account was limited. Your account access will remain limited until this issue has been resolved. To secure your account and quickly restore full access, we may require some additional information from you for the following reason: We have been notified that a card associated with your account has been reported as lost or stolen, or that there were additional problems with your card. This process is mandatory, and if not completed within the nearest time your account or credit card may be subject for temporary suspension. To securely confirm your PayPal information please click on the link bellow: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run We encourage you to log in and perform the steps necessary to restore your account access as soon as possible. Allowing your account access to remain limited for an extended period of time may result in further limitations on the use of your account and possible account closure. For more information about how to protect your account please visit PayPal Security Center. We apologize for any incovenience this may cause, and we apriciate your assistance in helping us to maintain the integrity of the entire PayPal system. Thank you for using PayPal! The PayPal Team But the address the link actually goes to is... http://80.154.19.133/www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscrcmd_login.php which, of course, has nothing to do with Paypal. Edited January 31, 2006 by Rooster_Ties Quote
BERIGAN Posted January 31, 2006 Report Posted January 31, 2006 A scam I just got at my work e-mail (from which I've never used Paypal at all, never!!!). From: www-data on behalf of PayPal Sent: Mon 1/30/2006 7:14 PM To: (Rooster's real name) Subject: Account Review Team PayPal is committed to maintaining a safe environment for its community of customers. To protect the security of your account, PayPal employs some of the most advanced security systems in the world and our anti-fraud teams regularly screen the PayPal system for unusual activity. We are contacting you because on 30 Jan 2006 our Account Review Team identified some unusual activity in your account. In accordance with PayPal's User Agreement and to ensure that your account has not been compromised, access to your account was limited. Your account access will remain limited until this issue has been resolved. To secure your account and quickly restore full access, we may require some additional information from you for the following reason: We have been notified that a card associated with your account has been reported as lost or stolen, or that there were additional problems with your card. This process is mandatory, and if not completed within the nearest time your account or credit card may be subject for temporary suspension. To securely confirm your PayPal information please click on the link bellow: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run We encourage you to log in and perform the steps necessary to restore your account access as soon as possible. Allowing your account access to remain limited for an extended period of time may result in further limitations on the use of your account and possible account closure. For more information about how to protect your account please visit PayPal Security Center. We apologize for any incovenience this may cause, and we apriciate your assistance in helping us to maintain the integrity of the entire PayPal system. Thank you for using PayPal! The PayPal Team But the address the link actually goes to is... http://80.154.19.133/www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscrcmd_login.php which, of course, has nothing to do with Paypal. Perhaps Claude or one of the other computer experts can answer this, but besides the fact thes scammers seem to have websites far overseas, why can't companies like Paypal, etc find in searches sites that have their name in a web address, why do we have to bring them to the companie's attention? I have gotten emails from just about every bank known to man, including one claiming to be from the federal credit union...you would think this criminals would worry about who they claimed to represent, but I guess not.... Quote
Brownian Motion Posted January 31, 2006 Report Posted January 31, 2006 But the address the link actually goes to is... http://80.154.19.133/www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscrcmd_login.php which, of course, has nothing to do with Paypal. Most of these Ebay scams originate in Rumanian domains; this Paypal scam appears to have begun in the Phillipines. Quote
Christiern Posted January 31, 2006 Report Posted January 31, 2006 I recently found two unauthorized uses of my Chase debit car. One was for a purchase made at "Freaky Bikers," the other something even more bizarre. It turned out that both purchases were made through Paypal and Paypal apparently admitted to Chase that it was their mistake. I have only used Paypal twice, once for a software license purchase and once to make a contribution to the Big O. Quote
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