Anyone know what the scam is with emails from Ebay?

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419Eater is my life Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 264

Recently I've been getting emails from Ebay with specific questions about items for sale. Thing is I never have sold anything on Ebay, have no Ebay account nor any connection with Ebay whatsoever. The emails are addressed to my personal home account but with no connection with Ebay I can only conclude that they are sending them to random email addys.

Latest one was a question from a buyer asking if I would take a car in trade for a Suzuki 400 quad. I checked the product and it didn't exist.

So what's the catch? The email doesn't include any log in links so it doesn't look like a phishing attempt.

Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 12:25 am

Sounds like a check scam. They send you a check for over the price of the item and ask you to send the overdraft back. Check later bounces and bank holds you responsible.

419Eater is my life Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 264

That would work only if I were selling the item or if the item even existed. I checked the item ID and it came up null. Plus I never have sold anything on Ebay.

Only way I can figure that working is if they think I might be greedy enough to accept a check for something I'm not selling.

Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 12:46 am

I think there is or at least was a warning about those Emails on the Ebay web site. I used to get a lot of those about a year ago. Oddly enough to addys I seeded into guestbooks. Go figure.

Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 12:54 am

@Matt - I think that is the idea, I think they are trying to trip up greedy people on this one. This guy may have a bit of a heart and justifies his scamming buy stealing from people who think they are scamming him.

By bit of a heart - I mean a small almost visible by the nekkid eye kind of thing.

Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 1:44 am

Send the scam mail to [email protected], and they will shut it down, I have many time sent them, now if you get paypal scam mail, you would send it to [email protected], I have also sent many to paypal.

Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 8:11 am

Usually these are phishing rather than a 419 scam as such. The
emails look like offical ebay ones - complete with a link to
click on to log onto ebay. Of course the link is to what looks like
ebay, but isn't. Those who fall for it will try to log on, and then
the website captures their username and password. The more
sophisticated ones then forward you to ebay and log you in for
real so you are none the wiser.

If they have no link - then maybe they are just using them to
test if there is a real account at your end. If the mail doesn't
bounce then they know somebody is there.

If you could post the email here we could take a quick look.

Cheers

LN

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