ebay and Paypal

[GeorgeC]

Folks,

Be very, very careful about who you give information to!

Today, I got an "official-looking" e-mail from PayPal asking to confirm some information saying that "yadda, yadda" something was wrong with my account.

I foolishly followed the link within the e-mail to a website and got snookered almost completely. The site looked EXACTLY like PayPal's so I fell for it.

I called PayPal directly to confirm my suspicions and now I had to change all my passwords and get a new Credit Card!

PayPal straightened me out on their e-mail protocol and I gave them a copy of the e-mail that the impostors sent me. Hopefully, the perp that sent it out will get slammed by the cops. I've got no use for teenage crooks or hackers that think it's cute breaking into systems and stealing numbers like that.

So far so good -- no irregular charges to my OLD credit card (the number's gone baby and I get a new card next week) and a new lesson learned.

Believe me, I'm not a dummy that generally falls for this stuff but the Internet crooks are getting smarter all the time!

If a service EVER asks for confirmation of your information through an e-mail, go to the usual SECURED website (DON'T click on the links in the e-mail!) and call them through their help assistance line to verify if the e-mail is legit.

I'll bet you 99.9% of the time that the e-mail is a scam asking for personal information so that an identity thief can really screw you over.

Identity theft happened to every member of my family but we all took immediate measures to cover ourselves...

I've been hit by Internet crime twice, the other members of my family I suspect had numbers stolen by crooks at stores.

[Christian]

Some of these scams used to be pretty easy to see through and I would think, "If I had a notion to scam people [and I don't] I could make something more professional-looking than this." But a day or two ago I nearly fell for something claiming to be an eBay mailing. It was very well disguised and seemed to not make mistakes I'd noticed in prior things. But since it wasn't real some cracks in the wall started to slowly appear. For instance:

1. The URL linked to in the e-mail had "eBay.com" in it but not in the right place. Prior attempted scams would include an official-looking URL in the e-mail but when you click on the link it would take you to an entirely different URL that itself was not so official-looking (meaning it would not have "citibank.com" as any part of the URL). So, this eBay thing did seem authentic at first until I realized that that the "eBay.com" portion of the URL was not where it should be if it was actually coming from the corporate entity who genuinely owns the eBay.com domain name.

2. The e-mail had something about "Final Warning" in the subject line and it slowly dawned on me that I had never received any "First Warning" or "Second Warning" e-mails from eBay.

3. The body of the e-mail mentioned my "previous card" being declined and showed the supposed number for my previous card with twelve X's and then four actual numerals as the last four digits of the card number. My guess is that people don't really pay that much attention to their credit cards numbers and I'll admit I don't have mine memorized but I was pretty sure the four digits they mentioned were not the last four digits of any credit card I've ever had. But it did make it look official when they had the twelve X's there, as though they were really legit and concerned about protecting my information.

4. Any such e-mail where eBay or Citibank or PayPal or whatever is asking you to confirm your information is suspect, I would even go so far as to say 100% of the time because that is just not how they operate. As GeorgeC says, if you think there might be a problem just go to the real site (w/o clicking on the link in the e-mail), login to your account and see if it mentions anything about how credit card information needs to be verified. Chances are that such will not be the case.

And I'd forward any such fake e-mail to the real company. It seems likely to me that they could track the perpetrators and prosecute, especially since scam artists posing as them make them look bad.

[Ben]

These are nearly always scam emails and I just trash them.

If eBay/PayPal want to send you something important like that, they'll post you a message on their site which will request you read it when you next log in.

[Josh]

Don't feel bad, George. I nearly fell for the exact same scam. However, I noticed that they sent it to my Animated-News e-mail address, which I never use to register with.

[AniMan]

Thanks a lot for the heads up! I haven't received anything, but I since I do have an eBay credit card, I will keeps my eyes peeled for any scams like the one you mentioned. I think identity theft is the most vile and offensive of all theft.

[GeorgeC]

I can't believe it...

Those SOBs impersonating PayPal sent me ANOTHER e-mail today just like that scam over the weekend!

(Forwarded that one back to PayPal AGAIN to show that those @ssh***s haven't stopped with this scam yet.)

I seriously want some law enforcement official to catch these guys and go medieval on their @#%$@#$!@! Heck, I'd look the other way if somebody hung these jerks by their t*sticles!

(Maybe they can get the fellows from Singapore that caned that teenage jack-off a couple of years ago? I'm really not sold on the concept of "humane torture" or regular ol' prison being "good enough" for people that rip off tens of millions of dollars from regular people.)

Man, I'm really starting to HATE hackers... If only there were a way to send electrical shocks back to spammers and electronic con artists!

[AniMan]

They're relentless! I feel your outrage: it pissed me off just reading about it! When they catch them, the penalty needs to be very severe (very lenghty jail time in high security prison perhaps?). It's the only way to send the message to these scammers that it's not worth it to try doing this.

[askmike1]

Unfortunately, this happens all the time and there is little authorities can do about it. There is no way to trace email. The biggest thing we can do is try and distinguish official and unofficial email. Almost no company will ever ask you for your password or creditcard information through email. Also, make sure you are at the companies main site when you click a link.

[Christian]

I can help them trace it. They just need to set up a fake credit card account then enter the number when a scam e-mail arrives then wait for a charge to be made then go from there.

[askmike1]

I can't believe 50 people have already bid on this, the latest being almost $1000. I think this tops the religious Grill Cheese as best-item-sold-on-Ebay.

[Christian]

I'm anxious to hear if the "winner" acquires the curse. Maybe this is also a Blair Witch-style marketing scheme on behalf of Disney to drum up interest in the sequel coming out later this year.

[askmike1]

Maybe this is also a Blair Witch-style marketing scheme on behalf of Disney to drum up interest in the sequel coming out later this year.

I think that would be really funny. If it's true than it is working pretty good since it has received over 101 thousand views.

[Josh]

I'm anxious to hear if the "winner" acquires the curse. Maybe this is also a Blair Witch-style marketing scheme on behalf of Disney to drum up interest in the sequel coming out later this year.

I had wondered myself if this was just a marketing scheme from Disney but was afraid to mention anything, as I figured the idea was too crazy. If this is a marketing scheme, it may be one of the best I have ever seen. It certainly would be the most original.

Anyway, some reasons why I think the whole "curse" is fake:

1) A guy talks to a priest, only to be answered something to the extent of, "I'm a priest. I don't have time to help you with your spiritual problems!." Also, you mean to tell me that demon can't possess an animate object, but a human spirit can? So why did the "spirit" burn the priest's hand? Also, it is well-known that priests do bless houses in cases such as things flying around and appliances acting up. So why didn't the guy ever get the priest to bless his house?

2) Notice in the "20-Mar-05" update, he threatens to end the auction early. In other words, "You had better hurry up and try to bid on this amazing toy soon! There's no time to consider buying it! Just buy it!"

3) Someone has to buy the toy, in order to "own" it, right? So I guess all those presents I gave out last Christmas still belong to me, huh.

4) He can guarantee that the item will get to the bidder's house, but not to the nearest dump. However, right after guaranteeing that the bidder will receive the toy, he says that he will offer a refund if the toy doesn't arrive.

5) "If, in fact, it turns out that the Stitch is just a vessel for a poltergeist or other spirit inhabiting my home, chances are the spirit will stay here if the item is sent too far away." Why didn't the spirit stay at the place where he bought the toy at? Or if the spirit is "exclusively visiting" this guy, why did the spirit just start acting up when the toy arrived?

6) He continues to stress that the toy may noy act possessed when it reaches the winning eBay bidder.

[askmike1]

4) He can guarantee that the item will get to the bidder's house, but not to the nearest dump. However, right after guaranteeing that the bidder will receive the toy, he says that he will offer a refund if the toy doesn't arrive.

The poster says "If the buyer does not receive the item, a full refund will be given via Paypal...If anyone attempts to get a refund because of an empty box, they will need to give full, conclusive evidence that the box was empty when they received it, supported by the mail service, stating that the package had damage when received."

On an update, the item is up to $10,600. What I find hard to believe is the main buyer 'andrewtitan47' single handidly over 44 bids (without competition) raised the bid from $600 to $4,600. Another thing is that this person is a "professor at a university, and he would like to study this toy, to view the energy contained within with his students." I could be wrong but I don't think professors make a lot of money and I don't think one would really want to spend $10,000 on a stuffed toy. But then again, there probably are people who would.

[Macaluso]

These people that do these ebay auctions are friggen geniouses. I should try selling a "Ghost in a jar". I'll make tons of money.