Beware...Frauded on Ebay

[tuna]

Been with Ebay and Paypal sense they started, never been scammed yet, but I do often get fake emails from them. The first thing I do is look at the address, if it's not a genuine Ebay or Paypal address I report it..

[Babette]

Atruvirgo, I'm so sorry this has happened! Everyone here is right - it's scam, and you've been had.

You really need to just practice safe PayPal and Ebay techniques. I've yet to have this happen to me, because I do just as others have suggested.

Another good tip is to regularly change your Paypal and Ebay passwords.

Good luck with Customer Service! I'm so sorry this happened to you!!!!!

Huggers,
B.

[ddpelp]

yep been doing Ebay and Paypal long before Paypal was owned by Ebay. Everyone here is right I am afraid you played into their grubby little hands.

I have rarely had a problem however, unless Paypal has changed you can not forward an email to the spoof address at least when i have tried to report them I get a response from Paypal that says to log onto my account first (outside the email) I just do not want to fool with it so just delete the spoof email..

Paypal really isn't too customer friendly but they will go after fraud in due time

[atruvirgo]

Thanks everyone. I did close my credit card acct. and as of this morning nothing was actually charged to paypal so at this point I think I am covered. The hardest part was that I couldn;t get logged in to PayPal last night to check it out so I went ahead and called the bank. I didn't want to waste time if indeed this "Joker" was going to somehow get my money! I did forward the email to spook and I did a report on paypal this morning when I could finally get logged on. I did send a complaint on the seller who after 14 days has not shipped my item but has been paid!!! We will see how that goes. I tried 3 times to get it resolved with him directly and finally decided to report it. Happy Saturday...off to a BBQ with the grand daughter! and hubby:lol:

[Rabid1]

It's called Phishing, and it's VERY common.

It's not limited to just PayPal & eBay however. The thieves will flood the Internet with millions of official-looking emails from banks, credit unions, loan companies, etc. If even a very tiny percentage of people respond, they can make off with a lot of money & goods.

To make matters worse, the thieves are usually in a foreign country, making it difficult to even find them, much less prosecute them

I had an employee get scammed out of $4500 by somebody in Toronto. He reported it to the FBI, who basically told him there's too many cases like his for them to spend any resources to bring them crooks to justice.

Bottom line: Always always always know for certain who you're dealing with before giving any information.

[goose]

Rabid1 is correct -- all good advice and comments.

In general, there is no financial institution that will send you an email asking for account or personal information.
I've been doing ebay and paypal for years, but I'm a true skeptic.....If it doesn't "smell" right it goes directly into the trash!!! I get a lot of smelly mail!!!!!

Yes, I have put legitimate mail into the trash, but the percentage is very small compared to the grief I have saved myself......

My wife knows pf the phishing results from a virus passed which essentially caused me to have to rebuild the entire computer from scratch to get rid of it.....She knows better now.

cheers
gg

[Vader]

Has anyone ever been screwed on Ebay????

Paypal and eBay have lots of trouble with scam e-mails as others have mentioned.

In addition to getting scam e-mails, I have had my eBay account hacked into, and taken over by someone else. It took several weeks and quite a few e-mails, live chats, and phone calls to FINALLY get the whole mess cleared. It was extremely aggravating because on a few occassions, I was being suspected as the person who was hacking!!!

All in all, a very frustrating and bad experience. I'm sorry to hear you may have to go through any of it.

[Guest]

I got one this week supposedly from PayPal that said they have deposited money into my account! Now that could appeal to your human nature to get something for nothing, but I didn't bite. It was a "phishing" expedition to get my password and then empty my bank account. I thought of a particular password to put in there for them but that wouldn't have been very nice on my part!

Pastorgilbert

[atruvirgo]

The email never asked for any personal info. It just said I had made a purchase and that I was being charged 47.85. It gave a transaction number, user id name, email address and item description. None of which rang a bell as a purchase I made. What I am trying to understand is what they gained by doing it.

[kteague]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you responding to their fake site and signing in with your password gave them the key to access your info at the real site. Now what they did after that I'm not sure. But one scenario I can imagine related to the site is they could make purchases as you for nonexisting items with the money going to them or a crony who would disappear soon. Aside from that site, they could do who knows what with your Paypal account info. But you've stopped them now.
Kathy

[Sleepy Dog Lover]

I just had a really bad experience on ebay recently. I usually ignore all of those emails from paypal and ebay because of scam reasons. Well, Paypal hit my bank account directly for $1,656 for an item that I didn't bid on, didn't purchase, and didn't authorize. Of course, I changed my paypal password, wrote the seller of the item (who had not hit my paypal account), and reported it to my bank.

I never received an explanation of what happened, and it took about a week for my bank to return the funds to me, but it did eventually get cleared up. Whoever hit my paypal account was not the seller, and not surprisingly, didn't answer any of paypal's email to him. I have since removed my bank account information from my paypal account.