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[mijfife]

Hi folks, just thought I'd warn you about an ebay scam that I havent seen before. I received the following message through ebay messages today

Contact from tjquicken65
 tjquicken65( -1)
 Positive feedback: 0%
 Member since: 04-Dec-06
 Location: LA, United States
 Registered on: www.motors.ebay.com
 
 
Item: 1999 VAUXHALL OMEGA GLS AUTO ESTATE, LPG /DUAL/BI FUEL (110072255254)  
This message was sent while the listing was active.
tjquicken65 is a potential buyer.
 
 
Hello,
My name is Lucy Avian.
I am interested in your item. The problem is that I am a very confused as I've seen another item very similar to yours.
Please, have a look:
hxxp://3422784404/?motors.listings.ebay.com/Cars-Trucks_W0QQa10239ZQ2d24QQa10244ZQ2d24QQa38v1yZQQa38v2yZQQa39ZQ2d24QQa39705ZQ2d24QQa    
I pasted the link into my browser and it took me to an ebay sign in page. I stupidly signed in, not suspecting anything amiss as the message came via ebay. It didn't take me to the page I was expecting and it was then I realised that it was a scam.   I changed my password immediately and have notified ebay. Since then, I've had another two identical messages from other users!!
Just thought I'd warn everyone in case you are selling something and get the same.

Cheers Jim
 

[Gwilym]

The clue is in the link as it is hxxp not http

[TheBoy]

Common enough - bt of url masking going on their.  If you use a decent mail client, hover over link and you should get tooltip saying where its going...  ...if its not x.ebay.co.uk then its scam.  Also, you never follow links in email.

[tunnie]

i had a scam e-mail the other day, about my Barclays account asking to confirm my details.

You have to be careful with these things, mijifife another clue was he kept referring to your car as an "item" also he is based in the U.S.A  

I had my eBay hacked a year or so ago, never filled in any forms so don't know how it happened. But i am always extra careful looking at emails from any company's that have my credit card details on file  

[mijfife]

I would never normally follow a link in an email but I assumed in this case that because it had come via ebay itself, it was genuine   Oh well, lesson learnt and I won't fall for that one again  

Cheers Jim

[Markie]

I despise beyond all comprehension the evil cheating scumbags that do this kind of thing and try to fool people.

Makes me  

[Gwilym]

I despise beyond all comprehension the evil cheating scumbags that do this kind of thing and try to fool people.

Makes me  

I agree though would not be quite as articulate as you.

[mijfife]

I'm more angry with myself for getting caught out, I'm usually so careful with these things  
Oh well, if the warning saves anyone on here from getting scammed then it's not all bad and I did manage to change my password right away. Fortunately the paypal password is different so that should be okay too. I'll just keep an eye out for unusal activity on my account over the next while!

Cheers Jim

[TheBoy]

I'm more angry with myself for getting caught out, I'm usually so careful with these things  
Oh well, if the warning saves anyone on here from getting scammed then it's not all bad and I did manage to change my password right away. Fortunately the paypal password is different so that should be okay too. I'll just keep an eye out for unusal activity on my account over the next while!

Cheers Jim

Also, if you use same password on any other common site - banks, amazon, play etc - change it there as well

[Markie]

I'm more angry with myself for getting caught out, I'm usually so careful with these things  
Oh well, if the warning saves anyone on here from getting scammed then it's not all bad and I did manage to change my password right away. Fortunately the paypal password is different so that should be okay too. I'll just keep an eye out for unusal activity on my account over the next while!

Cheers Jim

Happens to us all Jim - Main thing is you changed it immediately.

Any bites with the ad for the Omega yet? If only it had been 3 days earlier  

[mijfife]

Yep Mark, it's just sold, see my other post in this section  

Cheers Jim

[Paul M]

Disable HTML email and you won't have this problem, as it's nigh impossible to obfuscate stuff in plain text It also screws up 90% of spam mail too which is an added bonus.

HTML should never have crept into e-mail in the first place, totally unnecessary. Once again, we can all thank sir bill and his "embrace, extend, destroy" policies for that one. Ever looked at the source of an e-mail sent from Outlook? A message with two words manages to end up being about 2k of pointless, illegible gibberish, one of the reasons I avoid it like the disease it is.

[TheBoy]

Disable HTML email and you won't have this problem, as it's nigh impossible to obfuscate stuff in plain text It also screws up 90% of spam mail too which is an added bonus.

HTML should never have crept into e-mail in the first place, totally unnecessary. Once again, we can all thank sir bill and his "embrace, extend, destroy" policies for that one. Ever looked at the source of an e-mail sent from Outlook? A message with two words manages to end up being about 2k of pointless, illegible gibberish, one of the reasons I avoid it like the disease it is.

While plain text was fine for when us internet users were all geeks, it is not suitable now for the masses.  A formatable text was necessary.  The implementation with both RTF and HTML could have been better, but most mail clients do give enough clues.  Plus, don't follow mail links!

Also, plain text won't show a cleverly rewritten URL, as we tend to only look at first part of URL, and often expect unreadable text after it (most pages are now dynamically generated and tracked), so its easy to make a URL that starts http://www.omegaowners.comxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx where x is a series of specific numbers that goes to a completely different site...

[Paul M]

I missed the whole "internet for geeks" thing actually, first time I even saw the internet in action was 1996 I think when I was in school, and by then it was well on the way to being layman-ised.

I still think there's no need for HTML in e-mail, it just causes loads of clutter, retards do stupid things like turn on comic-sans 24pt with yellow background making it illegible, and it's a spammers dream as there are so many ways to get around the filters like the current favourite of embedding a hyperlinked image with all the junk text so the filters can't parse it.

If you *really* need to do fancy stuff (and I don't mean what M$ put it there for, like bold and underline and other crap) then what's wrong with an attachment? MIME attachments work on almost every mail client I've used, if you're desperate to show off your HTML skills then a separate extension that I can open in my chosen browser will do the job. Likewise use a filetype appropriate to what you're trying to convey, rather than cramming it all into a bloated, illegible HTML e-mail. Either that or just post a URL link in the mail.

I click on e-mail links all the time, and funnily enough I've never been stung. That's because plain text makes it difficult to obfuscate, and personally I consider links like login.ebay.com-jsdufusdf.ru to be rather obviously not the real deal.

[TheBoy]

Firstly, MS did not invent HTML or RTF email.

Secondly, any attachment should not use email. MIME (and others) are inefficient, and not what smtp was designed to transfer.

Thirdly, as I said in an earlier post, it is equally easy to hide a URL in text email - there is a well known way to do this. Its spottable, but then so is a fake html link if your email client is fairly new.


I'm not saying MS's implementation of html or rtf email is ideal - the rtf one in particular did have a few flaws in early days...   ...but everyone else's has had issues.

I am certainly not a fan of MS, and really do not like some of the things they are doing with Vista and Longhorn. But I have to concede they are the best option for the vast majority. Hence, I do not buy into this M$ are evil and must be avoided at all costs fad.  I deal with many OS vendors - MS, Novell/Suse, Sun Microsystems, RedHat etc, and MS are by far the best for resolving issues, and quickly releasing patches for faults and flaws.