Warning! New Crime Schemes on Ebay!
on Artists are breaking into ebay accounts by piracy passwords and listing hundreds of phony items in them every day!
According to FBI / IC3 reports on the latest auction cheat schemes, the culprits are usually in cyber cafes, half a the public away.
They love to lure shoppers with ridiculously low prices. When you announce the listings, however, they always request you write them privately to about a "buy-it-now" price (this is an obvious sign of a western alliance con). There is never a real "buy-it-now" ebay button to acquire the item in the listing.
Often, once you write them privately, you'll be given a phony "buy-it-now" EMAIL LINK that takes you to their own scam webserver. If you click on it, they will try to heap up passwords, account info, etc. and rob you. At the very least, they will keep your passwords to hijack your ebay account and fill it with phony auctions.
After emailing a scammer, I received half a dozen phony emails like this: "You've well-founded sent a payment to (blah blah) Click here to compensate for the transaction." or "You've received an UNPAID Element STRIKE for (some weird item)" and last but not least: "Purchaser Complaint: You never shipped (another weird detail) I'm reporting you to the local police! " (Clicking on Piece No. sends you to scam website). There was even a phony unite to report the mail to ebay pledge!
I changed the email address in my ebay account, so that any inveigler ebay mail came to the inapt address. When you are using paypal and ebay often, it's dangerous to be opening mail that looks undisputed, trying to convince you that you've sent payments to peculiar people for weird things!
Foremost any suspicious ebay mail to spoof@ebay.com!
The bottom limit on scams...If a seller seems to be begging you to email privately, it is presumably a stolen account. Scammers have to solicitation western unions in private emails, because ebay blocks it in listings. Using ebay's "Ask Seller a Cast doubt" link also alerts the real account proprietor to fraudulant activity.
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