Since everyone is posting their Citibank scam stories I thought I'd share this with you. I've received two emails in the last week pretending to be from eBay. The sender's address is [email protected], and the email contains eBay's logo and some other official-looking images. The message states: "We are currently performing regular maintenance of our security measures.Your account has been selected for this maintenance. Protecting the security of your eBay auction account is our primary concern, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause." Then I am supposed to type in my eBay username, password, mailing address, and credit card information. Looking at the html source of the form, it submits to a website in Arlington that I assume has been hacked - I've emailed their webmaster but haven't gotten a response yet. There is also a yahoo email address embedded in the form as a hidden field called "recipient". Just so's ya'll know, eBay does not send out emails requiring you to type in any of your account information on a form in the email. I suspect this started happening after I sent some questions to some users about a couple of bikes I was looking at bidding on. The bikes were priced suspiciously low and the auctions didn't list a VIN so I was naturally curious what the scam was. I think I figured it out - it's just to collect email addresses from eBay users to try and trick them into sending their credit card info. You have been warned.
Recently I have taken to investing, selling, and trading vintage saxophones. Since they can sell for $2500-8000 this is the kind of eBayer that scammer like to latch onto. I now receive AT LEAST 5 emails a day offering to sell me vintage saxes. They find me as a bidder, and then send me an email: Mr. Bidder, We have exact same item (Selmer Mark VI Alto Saxophone S/N 75046 as we see you have bid. Our price very better. Only $2000. Please email with quantity you require, and transfer money to our account asap. There's a couple of problems with this. They are offering to sell me a "quantity" of a rare, handmade saxophone that few have ever seen, and not only that, they will sell me a quantity with THE SAME SERIAL NUMBER!!!! DUH!!!!!!! I had a guy today try and sell me a sax from England. It was priced in GBP. The ad read: Recently overhauled by a top expert right here in Chicago, where I have played this horn in clubs for years... Yet, he lived in London. I typically respond something like: I hope you and all of your offspring burn in Hell. Please kill yourself immediately. About 1 in 10 will respond with their true personna.
I just won't click on any html email links. It's SO tempting tho.. But ebay isn't secure except for login so any 'script kiddie' can steal your password if you update it. Plus there's no lockout in the first place, so they can run thousands of pw's until they get into your acct. They don't have this feature because it would mean spending money on customer service. A friend who is a security expert showed me how easy it was (for him) to break into ebay, hotmail, domain registrations etc. Kind of scary..
Forward any questionable "ebay" emails to: [email protected] I also have had a couple recently and they were NOT from Ebay. Ray
I got one of those a few months ago. The page looked slick and ligit but because it was asking for my Uname and Password (NEVER give those thru an email), I got suspicious and looked at the source. The form submitted to an ".ru" URL. nice try...
I got one of those. I said to myself "self" that's what I call me "self, don't they already have that info? I think that's where i get the info from evertime i forget it." Delete
I've noticed that power users with a lot of good feedback are getting their user id's stolen. The theif then posts an item of value at about half its value. They are making the ads look pretty damn legit, but the price is to good to be true. So I took a look at the sellers feedback & started to check out what they normally sell & low & behold stuff starts to not add up, consistant items of say jewlery & womens clothes then all of a sudden a Motorcycle at half its going value. This is way out of hand, & unfornatley their is little ebay can do to prevent it without major overhauls to their security.
