At last a fool proof way to spot eBay scam and spoof emails
March 26, 2008 – 7:44 pmHave you ever been the recipient of one of those emails which claim to come from eBay and you can’t just put your finger on it but something just smells wrong about it? You know that in a moment of madness you could be sending your details to some very dishonest types in a matter of seconds.
Well fortunately I have so many firewalls, warnings, whistles and bells on my PC that I would have to be the worlds biggest dumb ass to fall for that one. But if you want to make sure you don’t fall foul of the dreaded eBay spammers and eBay spoofers here are some top tips to look out for.
I would suggest we start with the easy and obvious solutions and then we see how things develop from there…
It’s pretty straight forward actually to tell if an email came form eBay or not and I think you find the following information helpful. If you know any other techniques please let everyone know at http://www.auctionwealthsecrets.com/auctionnews/ my eBay blog.
1. Who sent the email: If you are about to open an email in your email system (email client) take a quick peek at the ‘from address’ and see if the email has come from eBay.com. If not you should immediately be suspicious and delete the email. Check twice and make sure you haven’t mistaken the eBay.com address for a spoof such as 1eBay.com, eBy.net or something similar it’s and easy but expensive mistake to make.
2. Where would the link in the email take you will indicate straight away that that email is from a scammer. Carefully place your mouse of over the link and confirm for yourself. Under no circumstances click on the link.
Now look at the lower left screen just on top of the computer start button. This will indicate where the link you would be sent to if you clicked on the link in the email. If the link is anything other than http://www.ebay.com/whatever/ then it is a scam email. You can either delete it or send it to spoof@ebay.com and they will investigate it’s origin and hopefully put a stop to this for you.
I think it is also a good idea to block the address in your email system so you don’t get any more annoying junk from this scammer.
3. Stop and think twice before replying to any email from anyone. Many spoof emails refer to transactions which never happened. A good example of spurious email would be one asking you for cost of an item you know you don’t have listed or asking about shipping charges for digital items.
A popular spoof technique is to send you a winning bidder email message.. If you haven’t even placed a bid of the item in question and in fact even if you have just hang on couple of minutes and I am about to reveal a technique which will stop you making a foolish error for good… You are still waiting I hope?
Drum roll please here it comes the fool proof way of making sure you NEVER open a scam eBay email message, it’s so simple you’ll kick yourself but here it is.
Every single genuine email which is communicated through or by eBay will be sent to your MY EBAY account and as a hard and fast rule I suggest if it isn’t found here it isn’t real. Pretty simple when you know where to look. So if you want my advice delete any emails reported to come from eBay from your email and use the much safer route of doing all your eBay communication through the eBay system. By using this method you’ll be able to stop those eBay scammers dead in their tracks.
Tags: Auctions
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