ChasingAmy

I got an email and it looked all official from Ebay this morning. Said something about hackers attacking Ebay and all users had to reactivate their accounts... yada yada yada... I clicked the link and stupid me signed in with my ebay name and password (which I changed once I discovered it was fake :P). It eventually asks for your email password "So that paypal payments can be made or something like that... that is what made me look @ the address bar :P. Lol I am so stupid just glad I caught it. Reported it to Ebay. I am kinda computer savy so I was surprised I went as far as I did... hope many people don't get caught by this.

Just a heads up for everyone!

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Don't you know about the bird?

thatoneguy

Wow, yeah, that's good to be aware of. It's surprising how often people will do things like that without checking to see if it's legit. Like, people get an e-mail from their "bank" or "credit card company" looking for info and they'll just send it to them without thinking... I dunno, I tend not to trust things like that because of reading things like ChasingAmy's situation, I definitely don't want to give someone all my info and get screwed somehow.

connyosis

Yeah I've had a few mails like that myself. Most wind up in my spam filter, but some passes through. I'm usually suspicious of mails that want me to enter my personal information somewhere...

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If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby.

spindles

Just replace 'usually' with 'always' and you'll have the right idea

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who hid my keyboard's PANIC button?

Pip

No serious bank/webshop/forum would ever send an email asking for your username or password. If someone doesn't know your password, they aren't supposed to know it either. Simple rule.

userasdf1234

Good looking out ChasingAmy. I hope that no one gets tricked into this.

sob

They don't ask for it up front. They create a link to an authentic-looking web page and tell you to "sign in."

I've gotten some that I was pretty sure (from the address) were authentic, and I still wouldn't sign in from the link.

Better to go to the company's site yourself, THEN log in.

tekyman

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