All,
The one thing that both Ebay and PayPal tell you in their emails is that they ALWAYS ADDRESS YOU BY YOUR NAME.
If you EVER get an email which simply says "Dear Paypal user" or "Dear Ebay User", it IS A FAKE.
The good news is...if you ever get one of these emails, you can send them to
spoof@ebay.com or
spoof@paypal.com (whichever site is appropriate) and they will confirm that the email is not legit, AND they will contact the ISP which most recently allowed the email to pass through their servers. I'm sure they dont catch EVERYONE, but I'm guessing they probably get more than a few.
So, if you ever doubt the authenticity of one of these emails, forward it to
spoof@ebay.com or
spoof@paypal.com.
Note: Also, look out for emails like this from WAMU (Washington Mutual), CitiBank, and a couple of other big banks. Phishers are using these institutions as decoys as well. Fortunately, these are a little easier to figure out....for example, I don't HAVE an account at WAMU, so it's not surprising that I have no concern whether they freeze my account because I didn't take time to validate my user details. =)
- Teky