Hey,

I'm selling my first item on ebay. Its an iPod
I got about 5-6 questions/offers to buy my ipod for $400-$600 ( I know all this is BULL, but thats not my question ), to send it to someplace international, blah blah blah

I got alerts from ebay etc. They say these scammers are trying to acquire my email, my paypal account email right?

My question is, how are they using these paypal account emails to do scams?


p.s. These were people with accounts that had very little or no ffedback, but from like 2000 and stuff.

They give you a clickable link then when you click it asks for your password and username then they have access to it,

Please god dont tell me you clicked it !!

Moving to eBay Discussion - Please use the correct forum to post threads.

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Scammers send these emails out to most people who are selling items like PSP's, iPods, PS3's, etc. The best thing to do is ignore them, my inbox is full of them daily I don't even bother opening them as they can lead to all sorts of problems. My advice to you would be only read emails from eBay that are actually in your "My eBay" and always check the address bar.

eBay do provide a number of Tutorials regarding spotting a spoof email and how to deal with them, see here.

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They hijack peoples ebay accs that are not used very often, Be very careful as they will bid up your auction and win it , then they will send you a paypal payment notice that actually looks very real , They will email you and say the funds cannot be released to you until you provide a tracking no, Always Always check the email address when you get any sort of paypal notice, Always make sure they shipping address is confirmed with paypal, They will also try and intimidate you with emails etc

I definitely did not click any links
these messages were all on "Myebay" inbox.....I know they are scams
I just wanted to know what they were trying to do

THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP!!!!!

When you sell an item, the scammer who brought your item will email you a scam email, This will be an 'Instant Payment Notification' from PayPal to notify you that they have paid. (PayPal always email you when someone has paid you an amount). Except, that this payment notification is fake, and the person hasnt really paid. Instead, they fake up an email that looks exactly like PayPal's. In this email, there will be a link for you to sign into your paypal account, this link unfortunatley does not go to a real PayPal page, but the scammer's identical PayPal login page. So you are filling in your paypal email and password into the scammers fake page, and voila! They have access to your account.

One of the easiest ways to check that this simple scam doesnt happen to you, Is when you recieve a payment notification from PayPal/Scammer, right mouse click any URL's that are in the email (preferably the one to log in to PayPal), Then click Properties, and then you can see the real url that the link will go to. Scammer emails will hide the real url you are pressing in the email, to make it seem it is a proper link to paypal, although they have hidden there scam site into the url instead, you can still find out where it really goes to.

Here is an example... the link apparantly goes to PayPal...
But right click, Properties...



And there is the real link shown...



It goes to msn.co.uk instead.

This is probably one of the simpliest, yet effective scams they use. This isnt the only one, but still it helps you protect your ebay/paypal accounts if you know a bit more about it.

Simply just delete it in your inbox. Set requirements for your sales such as :

Must have paypal account
Immediate payment required
etc...

When you receive payment , if it is not from a confirmed paypal postal address then do not send it and return payment stating you require confirmed paypal postal address in order to send.