Is this email really from eBay or a scammer?

Factual Questions
1

So I hear about a lot of scams by people claiming to be eBay representatives sending out emails, but I’m not sure if this email I got yesterday is legit or not. Since it takes an act of congress to get a response from eBay, I hoped someone here can help a brother out.

Here’s the (editted) email I got:

I removed the “fraud alert ID code” but there are 8 numbers there in the actual message.

So what of it? Is it legit? should I click the link or what?

2

Best course of action: forward this email to spoof@ebay.com. They will ascertain for you whether or not it is a scam. Don’t click on anything.

3

It is a scam.

4

Looks a bit like this. Probably a scam.

5

I hope that eBay would use better grammer.

And is that link supposed to work? I get a “connection refused” error.

6

“You have recieve this email because you or someone had used your account”
The poor grammar makes me instantly suspicious.

It is almost certainly a scam - the link (which looks like a link to a genuine part of the eBay site and has been converted into what looks like a genuine link when you copied and pasted here) will actually take you elsewhere - If you’re using a web mail service, click on View>Source, then search for the string http://scgi.ebay.com - you’ll probably find that it looks like this:


<a href="http://scgi.ebay.com/verify_id=ebay&fraud" target="_blank">http://123.45.67.89/</a>
  • the first bit is what you see on the screen, the second bit is where you’ll actually end up if you click it.

If you’re using Outlook, you can view the message source by dragging the message out of your inbox onto the desktop, then launching notepad and dragging the desktop copy into it.

7

Scam

8

Kinda figured but wanted to make sure since it came a day after I put up a bunch of auctions.

Wow, this one is pretty impressive. Bastards.

Thanks all

9

I have been receiving rather odd messages, purportedly from eBay, which are obviously not legitimate. I assume the nature of the scam is to harvest e-mail addresses. Is there anything more to it than that?

The message as it appears in my e-mail looks like this:

Given the poor grammar, it’s obviously phony. Selecting on the message, however, reveals it to be rather bizarre. The actual text of the message is: (I inserted a few hard returns to enable the text to fit in the post box)

So what the hell is that all about? Anything aside from circumventing spam-blocking programs?

10

What you’ve posted is a scam.

But, if you even suspect that your EBay account has been compromised or that EBay really is trying to contact you, don’t click on anything. Instead, just use your browser and log onto your Ebay account normally. If your account was being suspended or something, you should expect to see a notice.

11

I’ve been an eBay member since Oct of '99 (it doesn’t seem like I’ve been on the internet for that long…sheesh.) and I’ve received the occassional fake e-mails from eBay. A couple months ago I got a couple saying I needed to change my screenname because it was an e-mail address. I figured it was spam and ignored 'em. Lo and behold, I attempt to log in on Saturday and can’t. The screenname isn’t valid and neither was my email address to get it. So I sent a message to eBay and they said my account wasn’t hacked but my screenname had changed because it was an email address. Grr. I got the new screenname and checked my account. Nothing new happened, it didn’t even have the little sunglasses. I really wish that if they had messages germane to one’s account, that they’d show up when one logs in instead of these emails.