Phishing Email - best offers

[magpiecorner1]

Probably not a new thing, but first one I've had.

Received an email into my email box, offer on one of my items.  Daft thing is it made me wonder straight off because the offer was for the full buy it now price - as the item is on buy it now or best offer, why would anyone do that, when they can just buy at full price?

The message looks very convincing, even has my eBay name AND the correct email address.  It's on a private account so no email address on the listing.

The sender name was not showing as eBay, but the same name as the buyers eBay ID in the message.

Of course not sure what would have happened if I'd accepted the offer, but as I've never seen this before thought I'd give a heads up.

Not sure either if I can give the buyers ID, should be able to if it's made up, but could be a hacked account.

[m25jet]

If you haven't already done so by the time you read this response add the User ID to your Blocked Bidders List.  That way if the e-mail has come from a hacked account then the hacker won't be able to purchase anything you've advertised for sale and scam you out of your money by opening an unjustified Item Not Received/Item Not As Described case.

[robbtyke132010]

Buyers move in very mysterious ways - today I had an offer that was one penny down from the buy-it-now price. I accepted & will send off tomorrow - I am grateful for the sale! You may be a tad over cautious. I would accept, wait for payment & send it out.

[eastern-lights]

I think I'm right in saying, open to correction, that genuine messages will be in your Ebay messages on the Ebay website. If they don't exist there, they are scams. 

[marco@ebay]

Hi magpiecorner1, thanks for your post.

Normally, you should receive the same messages in both your personal email address, and your eBay messages, just like eastern-lights said.

If you want, you can confirm the item number for the item in question, and I could take a further look for you if you want.

Thank you,

Marco

[kath3735_wxmjn]

is there still an ability to report the phishing e mails to e bay (or was that paypal?)  I know i used to get quite a few and always reported them but had none for a while.

[marco@ebay]

Hi kath3735_wxmjn, thanks for your reply.

To report phishing emails, you can forward the message to us as an attachment at spoof@ebay.co.uk, and we will take it from there.

Thank you,

Marco

[magpiecorner1]

Hi Marco, will sent it to you and also the ebay name in a private message.  And I will forward the email to your eBay link.

Thanks

[magpiecorner1]

Its def a scam, not in my eBay messages and not showing as an offer on the account.

[marco@ebay]

Thanks for your reply, magpiecorner1. 

Yes, you can send it to me, but please make sure to report it by forwarding the email as an attachment to the email address I shared with you above.

Thank you,

Marco

[johnwash1]

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@magpiecorner1 wrote:

Its def a scam, not in my eBay messages and not showing as an offer on the account.

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But the curious thing is how the scammer got hold of your email address.  That's quite disturbing and I'd love to know the mechanism that's being exploited.

[dch2112011]

As a  business seller the contact information is shown at the bottom of each listing - glad magpiecorner1 had the nouse to spot this attempted scam - usually it will link to a false ebay login page and if you enter your login details - wham account accessed - worse is that this type of scam can come from a hacked ebay account direct to your ebay 'secure' messaging lulling you into a sense of false security - ebay messaging is far from secure  and ebay will not take any responsibility if your account is accessed from internal messages 

[snivelserpent]

I've just found one of these in my spam folder and have forwarded it to the ebay spoof address Marco provided (thank you).

Mine was also for a Buy It Now or Best Offer item, supposedly offering the full BIN price.  It was sent on Monday, offer valid for 23 hours, and initially I thought drat, I've missed it because it went into spam.  But then realised it would have shown up in my ebay account and I would have seen it there, but it hasn't.

It would appear to be a new scam, and a pretty clever one.  If it had come through to my Inbox rather than the spam folder then I may well have clicked on it.

But now I'm wondering how the scammer has linked my email address to my ebay account?  Ebay won't let me put my email address in a message unless it's someone who has already bought an item, but somehow a scammer has been able to tie my ebay account to my personal email address.  Does this mean they have access to the rest of the personal information on my ebay account?

[ceb2019]

I'm wondering the same thing. I just got an offer for the full buy it now price for my item but I was suspicious straight away as it wasn't showing up in the eBay app message centre. I checked the email and it has my email amd username in it. I haven't clicked on the links as I thought it strange to offer the buy it now price. The email it was sent from is made up to match their eBay username. I just messaged back and said "Thanks for the offer, it's yours" but I haven't heard back 😂

[downsizingxs]

I'm about to send a similar scam message to ebay spoof but what concerns me is how the scammer obtained my email address.

Can you explain how this might have happened and what, if anything, I can do about it.

Many thanks

[marco@ebay]

Hi downsizingxs, thanks for your reply.

It'd be hard to explain due to multiple factors, but I can guarantee you that your data is protected at all times. However, from experience, sometimes they just try guessing and see if someone falls for it. For example, I keep getting text messages saying that it is from certain network provider (one that I have never had) saying that if I don't click on the link they sent, my sim card will be disabled, but again, I was never with them, so they send the same message to everyone and see if someone falls for it, they are getting smarter every day as well, which is why we have to be extremely careful these days.

Thank you,

Marco

[kath3735_wxmjn]

that is so true, the amount of scam messages that arrive is getting ridiculous which is why i never ever press a link for any reason.  I go through the laborious process of actually logging in to a site or phoning a number i know is genuine from the company.   With e bay i just go into Messages, its a nusiance but at least i know if its genuine or not.

[marco@ebay]

Exactly, kath3735_wxmjn. It is very unfortunate, but it happens every day basically via email, or normal messages, and even phone calls. Sometimes they don't even make sense cause you don't have an account on the site "they are texting you from", but they send the same thing to everyone. So the best thing to do is avoid at all cost clicking on any links, log in manually and double check everything, and block the email or phone number they texted you from. 

Marco

[dch2112011]

Hi Marco, to me it seems that these scammers are somehow getting personal email addresses and linking the email address to a legitimate listing linked to the email address which for personal account holders is not visible on ebay - it is held within the ebay account - this makes the email potentially seem genuine.

You have to ask how a scammer can access this information - it would hardly seem to be pot luck with a random email sent to everybody - they are specifically targeted - this could be a breach of ebay data or via contact details sent between a seller and buyer - although ebay use forwarding from an ebay generated email address to the seller's genuine email.

The other point is why do ebay allow links to be sent internally from member to member in ebay's supposedly secure messaging.

many of these fraud attempts come from a fraudster first accessing a member's account them messaging another member purporting to be a member wanting to buy - with a link to the product which takes them to a false but convincing log in page and bingo access is given to the seller's account.

Ebay have a problem with the new ebay balance and have seen fit to publicly issue a warning to members that the ebay funds could be used to make fraudulent purchases which was pretty much eliminated with managed payments after years of funds being diverted by a similar scam when ebay linked to paypal.

Would it not be prudent to somehow eliminate and remove any link sent internally via messaging ? Would this not frustrate the scammers if not entirely stopping it.

What protection are ebay going to offer - ebay hint at the new protection but give no detail ?

[*vyolla*]

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@dch2112011 wrote:

Hi Marco, to me it seems that these scammers are somehow getting personal email addresses and linking the email address to a legitimate listing linked to the email address which for personal account holders is not visible on ebay - it is held within the ebay account - this makes the email potentially seem genuine.

You have to ask how a scammer can access this information - it would hardly seem to be pot luck with a random email sent to everybody - they are specifically targeted - this could be a breach of ebay data or via contact details sent between a seller and buyer - although ebay use forwarding from an ebay generated email address to the seller's genuine email.

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marco@ebay If emails are indeed being sent direct to sellers email accounts (and not being routed via eBay messages) then I'd also be flagging this as a potential security issue and asking how this is happening. 

How is a sellers personal email address being linked to their eBay account if it's a personal one (so there's no contact email in the actual listing)?