I closed my e-bay and paypal account two years ago, I still get pay-pal notices almost bi-weekly. And I get the notice: You account must be verified, please supply information. I lived with an old army buddy in Texas before I came back to Germany, he is an IP-server-programer. He fights hackers and scammers on levils that would melt our PC's. He said the scams are getting harder and harder to detect, the fakes are getting as good as the real ones. Since he can actually read all the X's and O's (like on Matrix), he can get to the root of it, but we as regular surfers, are basicly shafted.
I know it is a crock, but the European laws are iffy at best on telephone and internet scams. For example in the Netherlands, scams are common place, they send thousands of letters to every Tom, Dick and Harry outside the kingdom. I saw a news show, a German version of 20/20, they called the scammers, pretending to be dumb, and they were all cheerful, "Why yes Mr.Balh-blah, you are the offical winner of the secret Euro Drawing! We have a check for you right here for €100,000.00!
And each EC country has different laws for everything. The expensive phone scam is perfectly legal in Germany, because at the time their was no need to change any laws, and the criminals know the loop-holes and the fact that the laws are too old to keep up with todays technoligy.
I have a friend here who is a lawyer (no, really he is okay
), but I showed him a letter I got from some scam in Spain, it read something like this:
Dear Mr Lynn,
You have won €1000,748.00 in a secret lottery, please keep this win confidential until we announce you as the winner. Please fill out the attached form, and we shall deposit the money in your account.
You must return 10% of the prize to our office for taxes, and handeling-transfer fee.................................more mumbo-jumbo......
But my friend Lionel Hutz, said the scam is if you sign the form and send it in as a joke, by EC law you have to pay the 10%. He said it is likely they would say their was an error, and you have won €100, but did sign an agreement to pay the handeling of the much larger sum, minus the €100 you actually did win
AND IT IS ALL LEGAL.
My wifes cousin was summering for a German lawyer, who in his free time surfed the net seeking persons making purchases on e-bay. He actually got a German woman I work with at the PX. She bought a StarWars III online from e-Bay USA, when she got the DVD she got a letter from a lawyer who has the ability to brouse e-bay somehow, but any way he sued her for €750 (about 900 bucks) for purchasing a foregin DVD, and posessing it in a country, where 20th Century Fox had not at the time established conditions of relase for Germany.
The lawyer gets to keep all the money, the German government, nor 20-C-Fox gets a cent of this. Some acient German law says a German lawyer can sue an individual for minor violations, on the spot. Back in 2748B .C. (or when ever) the lawyers had to pay tarrifs to the kingdom they were in. But the thousand year law still stands, but the lawyer doesnt have to pay anything to the state, because THAT was changed after WWII.