Okay, wait, I’ve actually had this happen. I mean, I’ve gone to web sites to buy something from which I frequently purchase, try to log in, fail, try again and succeed. Are you saying that phishers duplicate log-in pages of legitimate sites, then gather user names and passwords for use later? If the log-in page of my favorite woodworking tool site is in my favorites, or if I enter the web site listed on a catalog, am I gonna’ get misdirected to a fake log-in page?
:smack: You’d never know English was my native tongue! What I meant was that I’ve gone to web sites from which I frequently purchase …
If you type the URL yourself into the address bar, or follow a link from a legitimate site, you’re okay. It’s when you click on links in E-mails or on unfamiliar sites that you can get into trouble. for example, http://www.paypal.com?login=member isn’t going to take you where you think it will…
And it’s trivially easy to mock up something like the online login screen for Paypal on your own web site. Just go to the login screen and save as HTML. You might have a bit of work to do to put the styles back together or something, but it’s not hard.
Never follow a link from an E-mail to what you believe is a secure service that requires a password login. Never follow a link to a secure login from someone else’s web site. For example, if someone ‘helpfully’ provides you with a link to Paypal login from a page offering a product you want, don’t do it. If you’re unsure, check the address bar of your browser before you type in your name and password, and make sure that the URL is actually what you think it should be.
I loathe these people. I’ve received two alleged notices from amazon.com telling me to ‘click this link and update your account’. They’ve ripped off amazon’s whole look and claim it’s ‘for security purposes’ and that my account will be terminated. Is there a circle of Hell for phishers? If not, we need to come up with one.
That’s exactly what they do. I have HTML turned off in my email, but when I go to the spam filter at SBC/Yahoo it displays HTML (but that stuff is still on their server AFAIK so I’m not really “opening” it unless I download it to my machine and open it here). The PayPal phish I got looked identical to the PayPal log in screen.
The spoof @ paypal even sent it back to me with the HTML disassembled or whatever, and you can see such tidbits as
<p><img
src=“http://images.paypal.com/en_US/i/logo/email_logo.gif” width=“255”
height=“35”></p>
That’s a link to a PayPal gif. The web address is also in there where the phish was directed to.
So yeah, they look just like the legit site.
I long for the good old days when scammers worked by phone. A woman I worked with got a phone call saying they were calling from her bank, that her ATM card had been stolen and they needed her PIN number.
She gave it to them. Then she told us what happened. “Hey guys! Someone stole my credit card!” She was quickly clued in to the scam, and she called her bank and alerted them. The card had already been used.
She was a lawyer. I guess the scammers can get anybody, on a bad day.
She got hers back though. Someone stole a Nordstrom shopping bag from her unlocked car, in a parking garage. The thief was caught the same day, when she (the thief) tried to return the shoes that were in the bag, for cash.
The Nordstrom clerk looked at the woman, who was very large, and then looked at the shoes, a size 5, remembered selling them earlier that day, and called the cops. 
I’ve also gotten emails saying there is a problem with my eBay account and it will be suspended unless I respond.
Today I started getting several saying that a dispute has been opened because some person who won an item on eBay hasn’t received it yet and they need a response from me. When you click the link it goes to what looks like the eBay sign in screen.
One small problem with both of these is that they came to my work email which is not associated in any way with my eBay account. So that made it really obvious to me it must be some sort of scam.
What I really hate is that some ebay sellers are demanding PayPal payment, but then not providing their email address. When you click on their PayPal link, you’re not entirely sure where you’re going. There’s the supposed PP page with a user name to pay, but I had to read the whole URL to make sure there wasn’t another domain name in there.
I think I’m going to start demanding the email address from the seller so I can log in on my own and not use their link. If they won’t provide it, they must be scammers.