Phishing and SPAM Email

[Mission]

I'm not one to compliment people unless they really put forth a superior effort, but I must admit this one was pretty clever. I received this email this morning:

eBay Unpaid Item Reminder: #4591264353 

Dear eBay Member:

alex-the-best has informed us that they have not yet received your payment for the following item: Ancient Rome Colosseum Christian Literature Homeschool (#4591264353)

No action is being taken against your account at this time. However, it is important to remember that when you bid on or buy an item you are agreeing to a contract between you and the seller. If the situation isn't resolved within 7 days of this reminder, you may receive an Unpaid Item strike under eBay's Unpaid Item Policy.

If you don't respond by Apr-08-2006 you may receive an Unpaid Item strike.

Most Unpaid Item disputes can be resolved through direct communication between the buyer and seller, and we encourage you to work with your trading partner to reach a resolution.

Regards,

And then there were a bunch of buttons to respond to the request or take action on it. All lead to a non-eBay website where the first thing you have to do (naturally) is log in.

Your first inclination is outrage and to cry out for justice by responding to the request. Pretty clever. All the same, I reported it to spoof@ebay.com.

Bloody pirates.

[The Doctor]

Thanks for the heads-up! My wife keeps getting eBay spoofs, and I have to make sure she doesn't respond to them.

[Patrick Hand]

I got one once that was asking for my credit card number......

Obviously, I didn't send them any of the information they were asking for.......

[Duchess]

I used to get some from a fake Paypal. Usually something about suspicious charges on my account, could I please log in and verify my purchases so that payment could proceed. Tricky.

[Mission]

I got one awhile back that said something like, "You are eligible to become a Power Seller." or something like that. All you had to do was click on the button to sign up. That was another one that I thought was pretty clever. Someone from eBay even emailed me back about finding it (besides the normal "Thanks for reporting..." and "Your recent report proved to be a phishing email. We hope to God you didn't reply to it...").

I don't even give the "Your account is in danger of being deactivated..." or "We have noticed suspicious activity..." emails a second glance. It is but the click of a button and a few keyclicks to send it off to spoof@eBay.com or spoof@Paypal.com.

I wonder how they get your email addy? eBay is getting pretty good at closing the gate and protecting the user IDs. They may have mine because my email used to be the same as my ID before eBay made me change it.

[The Doctor]

That's the same kind of crap that keeps hitting my wife's inbox. She continually bounces it, and things have gotten better.

Thanks for bringing this up. More people need to know about this foolishness. :)

[lady snow]

i get them too nad some branch of citibank about my account that i don't even haveand paypal. i just click the spam button and it gets reported.

and let's not foret the nigerian scam that i get at least one or two a week and the foriegn lotteries that i've won

that's just a few. i'm not gullible to click on their buttons.

[Freebird]

Aye. Thankee for the information. Dang scams!

[Capt Grey]

Just FYI, neither e-Bay nor PayPal will EVER ask you for your log-in information by e-mail. Notifications about your account appear AFTER you log into their sites.

I've been using both since 2000 (before PayPal was bought by e-Bay) and I've sent them a TON of spoof e-mails since then.

[oderlesseye]

The best way to protect yourself is obviously to never respond thru links provided in -e- mail. You can't be redirected to a fake site or fooled into given up info if you use your own book-marked sites as for as I know.

My wife unfortunately jest had to flag her credit for falling for a credit scam that used a link from -e- mail.

I thought she knew better

[Mission]

Just FYI, neither e-Bay nor PayPal will EVER ask you for your log-in information by e-mail. Notifications about your account appear AFTER you log into their sites.

Not only that, when they do email you something about your account, they also put it in the "My Messages" section of your account. All you have to do is log in, go to the My Ebay tab - My Messages is right at the top. Before I did anything with the email this morning, I checked there and noted that 1) I had not, in fact, bought something called "Ancient Rome Colosseum Christian Literature Homeschool" (whatever that is - it sounds slightly nonsensical to me) and 2) There was no warning message in my messages. So I knew I had a phisher, even if it was pretty clever.

I clicked on the hotlink anyway and checked out the URL. It wasn't ebay.com. If the page url doesn't match, that's a dead giveaway. (One of the ones I saw was www.ebay2.something or other.com. That was almost clever, but not quite.)

[Caraccioli]

This was a pretty good one:

"Identity protection matters. And PayPal works day and night to help keep your identity safe. That's why it has come to our attention that your PayPal account information needs to be updated as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website. If you could take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records you will not run into any future problems with the online service."

And then there's a link to a page whose URL is clearly not Paypal. Very droll.

[Patrick Hand]

OOOOOOHhhhh.... that one is good..... wonder how many people they catch.... And how many send them their credit card numbers....just to stay "safe".....

[Caraccioli]

That's what you call "ironic."

[Rogue Mermaid]

The scary thing is that you get so used to the phishing that when your account is seriously in trouble you doubt the real e-mails.

A few months back my ebay account really was hacked. I never gave anyone my ebay information, so I thought the warning e-mail might be fake. Since the e-mail did seem pretty legit I closed it and opened ebay in a new window. Sure enough couldn't log in because someone stole my ebay idenity. I got help though the ebay online help team and had all 12 of the fake purse auctions under my name killed off immediately. I was impressed.

[Red Dog]

I get these all the time, the funny thing about it is I receive them to e-mail addresses that aren't linked to my account. Same with Paypal spoofs. The most common for me is the official looking ebay notice page with a message like: "I have pay for item I win, when will ship?" the notice never includes the auction # or item description but dose have an authentic user name attached. They are clever little devils ain't they? I don't sell to many things so I keep a pretty close track on whats going in and out. They ain't got me.....yet......for all I know

[Zephaniah W Nash]

What I enjoy are the PayPal notifications regarding a problem with my account - when I've never had any account whatsoever with PayPal or E-Bay. I'd say that's a weak point in the scam...

[Red Dog]

Just got a new type scam e-mail, it said the cedit card I had on file was expired and gave me a link to some travel agency web site.

[Caraccioli]

Oooooh, this was a really good one! It appeals to every pirate's most cherished urging: greed. All in nice Paypal formatting with a handy link. The URL on the link almost looks right if you don't study it too closely. This $100 prize will cost you if you follow that link, so keep an eye out for an email like this:

Matthew Eldridge just sent you money with PayPal.

Matthew Eldridge is a Verified buyer.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Payment Details

Amount: $93.50 USD

Transaction ID: 9FW55189WD400453J

View the details of this transaction online

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shipping Information

Address: Matthew Eldridge

1936 68th Street

Windsor Heights, IA 50322

United States

Address Status: Confirmed

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for using PayPal!

The PayPal Team

PayPal Email ID PP274

[hurricane]

Yes, that one's making its way through the net right now. Just sign in through the actual web site (for ebay or paypal) and you never have to worry about these things. Just don't be dumb enough to click on anything you get from either source. Everything you need is in the respective account sections of each site.

-- Hurricane

[Red Dog]

Ok, Info from an FBI, former SEAL friend of mine,:

I disavow any knowledge of this individual or any dealings with him professionally or in private. But he's a hell of a rum drinker and mean as hell when you ask him about his tattoo.

1) Never respond to an e-mail link, they will miss direct you to a "Phis hing hole" sign onto your account and do business there. Always look at the address it should prefix with "https"

:

2) Anything that requires a bank #, Social security # or verification# with pin is bad Juju.

3) miss spellings or bad grammar, red flag, and report to spoof@ebay.com or spoof@paypal.com they"re the same company, but different divisions

4) anything originating from a former soviet block country, Chechnya is a biggie for this, China is another. Beware

5) Anything that eBay or Paypal contacts you about will be sent to your account email as well.

[Rumba Rue]

There's also one that appeared recently here at the Pub in A Way to A Pyrates Heart. It was someone supposedly trying to find a web address (like they didn't know...), in hopes someone would respond to it. It's phishing for someone to respond so that a link can be formed to the responder and traced to their email.

Thankfully no one here did, and it got removed promptly after I notified Iron Bess about it.

So my advice to all here, is DO NOT RESPOND IN ANY WAY TO ANY SPAM HERE.

It may be a phisher.

Rumba

[Caraccioli]

This morning I found two spam messages in one of my email accounts:

From..........Subject

Buddy.........It is not over yet

Theresa......Think this is it

I hope they work it out!

[PyratePhil]

It seems to be dying out now, but for a while there it seemed the latest thing was to send emails with headings like:

"Castle Ford Tillie Wants Goto"

and

"Shrugging Meatballs Play Candide"

Never quite understood what they were trying to accomplish there, unless it was to give me a chuckle with some of the permutations...

[Caraccioli]

Maybe not... This is a reprint of something I posted in one of the random topics a week or so ago. (I should have put it here, but I forgot about this topic at that moment, I guess. Perhaps I should get a blog or establish a myspace account and blog there or something so's to stop torturing you folks with whatever random topic pops into my head to essay on...or maybe not.)

Dear Ladonna Dalton" <mpqbust@adelphia.com> aka Mrs. and/or possibly Mr. Email Spammer,

I am writing you to whinge (sorry, not in the market for Viagra just now). So let's not mince worlds and let me proceed with the whinging: If you're going to send me spam emails, at least try to pretend that your email is something I might be interested in. Is that really too much to ask? Take this last thing I received from you. It was entitled: "It whichever combinatoric."

What the hell is that?! "combinatoric" doesn't even sound like a valid word! (Although, in fact, it is. The exercise is left to the reader - presuming you read any of your email.) The sentence structure...or rather phrase structure...is utter nonsense! What about this email is there to tempt me to open it? I already know that it's some flagrant attempt to get me to buy Canadian drugs, the stock pick du Jour or something to increase my performance (or length or financial standing or any number of other insecurities you believe I have.) The only reason to open it is to determine whether Schroedinger's cat is, indeed, dead or alive. (No doubt you'll have to look that up too, you wizard of a spammer, you.)

I know, I know, you've probably got some random word generation thing that comes up with such tripe and you've got to get your money's worth out of it. Let me tell ya,' pal (or gal); it was a bad investment. It works against the very desire you have, which is to get me to open this unsolicited piece of electronic media and then proceed, dazed and starstruck, to take whatever action you propose in your purple phrase. I hope you bought it from an email your received entitled, "Wonk sipid space jeebers." That would at least hint that universal justice was at work.

Love,

Caraccioli

PS: Wallaby (ROO) is expected to grow by 3500% in the next 10 minutes. I'd buy some if I were you.