Aug
16
Phishing emails are fake emails that appear to be from a legitimate corporation with an online presence. They normally look quire authentic and urge you to visit a counterfeit site whereupon you are lured (via a fake login screen) into providing your username, password and possibly some other sensitive personal information. This allows the fraudsters who collect this data to hijack your account or steal your identity.
eBay users are often the target of these “phishing expeditions.” The senders hope to takeover your eBay account in order to pose as you as either a buyer or a seller in order to commit eBay fraud and bilk some other auction user out of their money or goods. I receive dozens of these fake eBay emails per week. I need to remind myself to be especially vigilant against this form of eBay fraud if I’ve got several active auctions running and am expecting emails from the auction site. But lately I’ve noticed a way to easily differentiate the spoof emails from the real ones.
Emails from eBay always begin with a line that states, “eBay sent this message to Douglas Feiring” and includes my eBay user ID in parenthesis. The next line informs me that my name and user ID were included in order to verify the authentic origins of the email. Spoof eBay emails seem to always specifically exclude my name and user ID (”This message sent to eBay member”) with the next line explaining that this was omitted to protect my identity. How ironic!
While there is no guarantee that an email appearing to be from eBay that includes my name and user ID is genuine, I’m comfortable immediately deleting the ones that don’t.
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One Response to “An Easy Way to Protect Yourself From eBay Fraud”
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You should never respond to eBay emails in your mailbox. Go to “My eBay”, and click on the “My Messages” link. These are all legitimate contacts made by both other eBayers and also eBay. This way you’ll never have to worry about responding to an email that may or not be legitimate.