eBay & PayPal Workshop on Spoof & Phishing Emails: Sept. 20, 1-2 PM ET

[carly@ebay.com]

Topic: eBay & PayPal Workshop on Spoof & Phishing Emails

Date: Thursday, September 20, from 1:00 PM -2:00 PM ET

Where: Right here on Canada Town Square

Description: Join eBay and PayPal Trust & Safety teams for a workshop on how to protect yourself from Spoof & Phishing emails, these are terms used to describe emails that ask for your personal or account information that claim to be from eBay or PayPal but are not.

We will help explain what they are, how to protect yourself from them, and how to report them to eBay and PayPal, and also advise on what to do if you have responded to a Spoof or Phishing email.

Hope you can join us!

Carly

[mukwoh04]

Hi everyone. I think I received 2 spoof emails from PayPal today. Both were a confirmation of a payment to a company for watches ... Rolex no less. They said the amounts would be put onto my credit card. I didn't make these purchases, and the emails were addressed to "Dear PayPal member". They had the Paypal logo and other PayPal info on them. I forwarded them to the spoof email on Paypal but that was just a few minutes ago so I hope they take care of everything. I checked my PayPal account and also my credit card acct. and so far no transactions were showing. My question is, how did they get my email address? and since they knew this, would they know any other personal info about me? I think this question would also apply to spoof emails that say they're from eBay. This is very scary. Thanks, Mukwoh.

[just*another*borg]

Oh shoot. I thought the workshop was on Thursday, as per the OP. Did I miss it?

If anybody is still around, perhaps they can answer this:

I have been receiving spoof emails regularly. But there's one in particular that keeps coming in every few days. The first thing that disturbs me is that is has my name in it (not just 'dear member'). I did forward this on to spoof@ebay.com and received confirmation that is was fake. However, I've since received 9 more of the identical emails, all originating from the same address, and all pointing to the same private URL address in the fake "link". I continue to report these, but they keep coming. Why hasn't this site been taken down? I feel like nothing is being done about it.

[valleyboy42]

You mention installing the Ebay toolbar to help prevent these spoof emails.

There has been a lot of controversy that this toolbar contains Spyware.

Do you Guarantee the ebay toolbar is 100% free of spyware.

[just*another*borg]

I tried to download the ebay toolbar several months ago, and my security software gave me a warning that it was potentially hostile, so I got rid of it. So, perhaps it does contain some sort of spyware, whether it be a 3rd party, or directly from ebay. In any case, I won't take chances like that with my computer system.

[lmather@ebay.com]

I'll try to answer a bunch of questions in one post. Hopefully this will cover everything...

mukwoh04 - it is difficult to say where the bad guys obtained your email address. Since they are so anxious to steal your password and other information, they will get your email address anywhere they can. Some possibilities are: they bought it on an email list, the scraped it off of the web (I've started receiving phishing emails to this email address since I started posting on the boards), ... If they have your email address it is very unlikely that they have other information about you. Think about it this way - if they had your email address AND they had other information about you, they wouldn't have to try to trick you to get that information!

just*another*borg - As I stated earlier, we have a team working 24x7 to get these sites taken down quickly. Unfortunately, there are some ISP's that are not as efficient at getting to these sites as we would like. We are constantly improving our processes to make sure these sites are addressed quickly.

valleyboy42 - the eBay Toolbar does not contain spyware. 'Spyware' is software that is downloaded onto your computer without your knowledge to collect personal information and record your Internet usage. eBay Toolbar is only downloaded with your consent and does not collect any personal information. The only time eBay Toolbar sends information to eBay about your off-eBay Internet experiences is when you explicitly report potential spoof Web sites to us. We encourage all eBay Toolbar users to review the specific ways eBay uses and protects your personal information by reading the eBay Privacy Statement located http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/privacy-policy.html.

If you try to install the toolbar again and are alerted to it being spyware, please email me (hopefully my email address is obvious) and tell me which company still says it is spyware so that we can get that addressed.

Thanks for your interest in this subject!

-Laura