Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Example of a common Ebay scam and how to avoid it.
Options
-
29-08-2005 5:57pm#1
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
heh.
I suppose 1% of sellers must fall for the scam to make things worthwhile for them.
Just a couple of points for people who may not know whats going on here:
the email address: customercarepaypalonline@mail.com
This is a free email address set up to appear as if it originated from paypal. try going to www.mail.com to see what I mean. Any e-mail from paypal will come from XXX@paypal.com
"Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup"
The buyer, (pretending to be paypal) contacted him through his ebay email address, rather than his paypal email address. This was a big mistake by the scammer, and a foolish one at that. It would have been easily avoidable, yet they did not think to do it. This shows a level of incompetence, perhaps even automation on their behalf.
Also, the fact that he changed his address at the last minute was 'dodgy'
Sounds like the scammer was doing several of these at the same time and used random addresses to set up the transactions. Then at the last minute, changed address to a 'hot' one. ie- one known to ebay to be a scammers delivery address. You will notice that they only contacted you through email with delivery address change info: ie- they didnt tell ebay that they changed address.
Also, any imperfection in spelling or grammar that you recieve in an official email from ebay or paypal is a major red flag as well. There are several grammatical oddities in the correspondance which cause me to raise an eyebrow.
Also, the sentance structure needs work. Its apparent that it was written by someone with ESL, rather than paypal staff.
The reason I point this out (perhaps it was obvious to you) is to highlight some ways to spot a scammer.0 -
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
masterK wrote:bs217, why don't you send a mail to the buyer stating that the item has been sent and make up a tracking number. If they reply then keep them going for a while, have a bit of fun with them.
Ahem... see post #11.
0 -
-
-
I wouldn't advise you to do an anti-scam.
It's over now, best to forget about it and learn from the experience.
Its almost certainly against ebays acceptable usage policy
You don't want the scammer(who knows your email/ebay account) to go spamming all your items with fake bids in retaliation.
Why? This is one of the common Nigerian scams, and calling it a 419'er (the nigerian criminal code for fraud) is just clouding it. Most people can identify with the term 'nigerian scam'. However, I see your point and I will change the title.lostexpectation wrote:i suggest you call it a 419'er for everbodies sake0 -
Here is an example of a genuine PayPal "Notification of Instant Payment" email message.
To be honest I am not quite sure if this is a good idea, since besides serving as a reference for spotting spoof emails, it could be used as an example for scammers to model their spoof emails upon.
FuzzyLogic, what do you think?
Here's the header info:Return-Path: <payment@paypal.com>
Delivered-To: <my email account>
Received: (qmail 21411 invoked by uid 503); 28 Jul 2005 13:47:55 -0000
Delivered-To: <my domain>-<my email>
Received: (qmail 4611 invoked by uid 503); 28 Jul 2005 13:47:55 -0000
Delivered-To: <my-domain>-<my-paypal-email>
Received: (qmail 25633 invoked by uid 503); 28 Jul 2005 13:47:50 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO outbound2.den.paypal.com) (216.113.188.112)
by <my mailserver> with SMTP; 28 Jul 2005 13:47:50 -0000
Received: from denweb99.den.paypal.com (denweb99.den.paypal.com [10.191.12.147])
by outbound2.den.paypal.com (Postfix) with SMTP id D2EF835C047
for <<my-paypal-email>>; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 06:48:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (qmail 22593 invoked by uid 99); 28 Jul 2005 13:48:03 -0000
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 06:48:03 -0700
Message-Id: <xxxxxxxxxx.xxxxx@paypal.com>
Subject: Item #xxxxxxxxxx - Notification of an Instant Payment Received from
<buyer> (<buyer-email>)
X-MaxCode-Template: email-auction-payment-notification
To: <My Name> <<my-paypal-email>>
From: "<buyer-email>" <buyer-email>
X-Email-Type-Id: PP753
X-XPT-XSL-Name: /en_US/auction/AuctionPaymentNotification.xsl
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=--NextPart_048F8BC8A2197DE2036A
MIME-Version: 1.0
0 -
-
Advertisement
-
FuzzyLogic wrote:bs217: Scammers obviously have seen real confirmation emails before, how else would they know what process to go by and what format to create the email in?
Well to be honest, I would have thought that if they had seen a genuine one, their copies would be far more convincing. There appears to be a high level of skill involved in at least some of the 419 scams, with highly realistic forgeries of bank drafts being cleared by UK & US banks only to be spotted as fakes when they return to their original issuing bank.
Of course, there's every possibility that they're just not very bright. 0 -
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
This discussion has been closed.
Advertisement