Odd one this, had an email earlier today from an Ian Harland, asking a question about a Panasonic phone I’d put a bid in for. Thing is, it’s been sent to my email addy that I use for this site, with my actual name, to show it’s genuine. My actual eBay account uses a completely different address, and a user name that isn’t even in the same language. What would they me trying to achieve with this? I can only assume, as I have apparently successfully bid for the item, that they want me to give paypal details, but why would anyone fall for something as laughably inept, using details that in no way match an actual account. I’m forwarding the email to eBay anyway.

me too

I forwarded it to spoof@ebay.com.

Got this reply:

Hello,

Thanks for forwarding the suspicious email you received.

The email is a spoof, also known as a phishing, email. (That’s
“phishing,” as in “fishing” for personal information.) [well duh – AM] It didn’t come
from eBay [well duh again]. Our Trust & Safety team is working to disable any websites it
links to…..[yadda yadda]

So there you go.

Isn’t the idea that you click ‘reply’ in the email, it then takes you to ebay and you are asked to sign in to send a reply. Only its not ebay, its a perfect copy and they harvest usernames and passwords as people log in.

You can test this by using a made up username and password to see if its accepted. I do this sometimes when using BT Openzone – occasionally you find someone broadcasting their network as BT Openzone. Presumably they want people to sign in so they can harvest their log in details to get free access at genuine Openzone sites.