eBay bidding

"kim" wrote

Now there's a first - I thought they never did anything wrong, let alone admitted to same! ;-)

John.

I'm in the US and saw a new (to me) scam the other day. I had bid on an item and lost. I got 3 emails about a "second chance" shortly after the auction closed. I thought it meant the high bidder was a shill for the seller until I noticed that each of the three had a different email address. Beware!

I have had one message - purporting to be from Ebay - saying my account was frozen due to non-payment. As I have only ever bought one item, had paid for it and had it in my possession for over four months something didn't seem right. I then had a second message - also supposedly from Ebay - saying that I needed to confirm my current password. A little confused by all this I sought advice from a work mate - as it happened he had had similar messages and his answer was straightforward - change your password immediately. Did that, no problems since. Hope this helps anybody who may get similar messages in the future.

David Costigan

These messages come in batches and then die away for a bit, just forward them to snipped-for-privacy@ebay.co.uk or if they purport to come from paypal instead then forward to snipped-for-privacy@paypal.co.uk You will get confirmation that the message was not genuine. No need to change your password unless you mistakenly acted on the email, if they knew it they wouldn't be asking you. Keith

David Costigan wrote: [...]

These are both variations on the bank security scam. You know: the e-mail that tells you your account with the ABC bank has been compromised and they need you to verify the account details. Etc. Surprising how many of them contain obvious grammar or spelling errors.

You can help in the effort to slow down this scourge by:

a) telling your legislator forcefully that your country should pass legislation which makes the use of the 'net for such purposes a crime; and also pass legislation that makes the internet service providers responsible for blocking spam at their servers. The first won't have much effect, but the second will.

b) find out whether your police force has an address to which you can forward scam spams. This can help the police gather the information they need to pinpoint to origin of the spam, and with luck catch the perps before they move on.

For Canada:

snipped-for-privacy@phonebusters.com (for bank security, fake lottery etc e-mails) snipped-for-privacy@phonebusters.com (for "Nigerian scam" e-mails.)

HTH

Ahh but in england if you contacted the police you would probably get the "that's a civil matter, nothing to do with us" line.

So now I still report it to ebay/paypay/ABC bank as spoof messages and I also fill it in using false details picked at random. Except for the name fields where I put in the name of the local chief constable (and if the conmen succeed with that name, the local plods will cease to consider it a civil matter and will move heaven and earth to find them).

Andy

Ahh, so fraud is not a criminal matter? Curious attitude to take, I think.

You do what you can. That's life. :-)

That is not my experience, but then I live in london and the MET police take fraud of this type seriously. I've just put into Google UK the words

- bank scam reporting police Even just the first hit gives details of internet fraud, how to avoid it and links to police for reporting etc.

Alan

I recently attempted to report a named ( and addressed ) fraudster resident in Leeds to the West Yorkshire Police only to receive the "If we took up every eBay fraud reported to us then we would do nothing else but that!" Like car crime - it is not cost effective and does not make police heros.

Well I get the same plus posts from paypal but my ebay and pay pal are not a com. so its obvious there scams

It might help if you told us the auction number.

How does it display if someone places a bid then increases it?

The bidders details appear twice, initiallly as the highest bidder and then as a bidder at the same value.

Yesterday, at the end of bidding, an Australian ebayer won and was declared to have paid immediately. Shortly afterwards this notice disappeared. On checking with the bidder she informed me that the same thing had happened on her eBay. (We are having a French seller and Aus buyer on a UK site.)

Yes, I get loads of these to some of my email addresses, except that the logon and email address I use for Paypal and Ebay are only used for that purpose, not for anything else, so I know I can delete them all after forwarding them to the relevant abuse address.

I also get emails from banks (HSBC is the worst) telling me that there is a problem with my online account etc. even though I dont have, and never have had, any account with that bank, let alone an online one.

wrote

Funny that, I do bank with HSBC and that's the one I get fewest of these scame emails for, but they're all on a loser anyway as I'm not daft enough to use internet banking.

John.

Aye lad, we don't hold no truck with these new-fangled doodads up in Yorkshire... you can't beat a handful of crispy white fivers in the tea-caddy, otherwise you only have to bother the taxman.

Steve

"Steve W" wrote

Thas reet there owd luv.

John.

When I was in the 6th Arctic Minesweeper Squadron it was quite normal for me to fill in Tax returns for the skippers of hull trawlers. As a

5th class Artificer on 1000 GBP pa it broke my heart to see what those guys earned in 3 weeks.

I presume that was when it was still legal to serve fish & chips in Yorkshire?

(You couldn't make this stuff up)

"peter abraham" wrote

As the son of a mining family who was unfamilar with the fishing industry I suspect you sum up nicely the remuneration of those skippers (and miners for that matter) by using the term 'EARN'.

I wouldn't have gone downt pit or on a trawler for a kings ransome.

John.