Newest Ebay Scam

[fabsroman]

Here is the new scam involving ebay. It usually only applies to sellers and I have only seen it while looking at bikes for sale.

A potential buyer will send the seller a question asking if the item for sale is the same item listed on ebay here: link inserted.

When you click on the link, a log in screen for ebay will appear. However, if you pay attention to the actual internet address, it is not to ebay. Yes, it starts out with www.ebay.com but it turns out to be something like www.ebay.com.ch.??????? without any backslashes. One seller included the question and his response to a bike auction that I was looking at and I clicked on the link. I noticed the issue, and sent the seller an e-mail, not that it would have done any good if the seller had already provided the scammers with his login and password. The "seller" wrote me back and told me that he had already contacted ebay and he also answered my questions about the bike, so I am guessing it was the actual seller and he also caught it.

In the cycling chatboard that I am a member of, there is a thread on this, and it appears that ebay doesn't have a fix for it yet other than to end auctions if the seller clicks on a link of this type. One guy just had his bike auction cancelled because he clicked on one of these links and the bidding was at $1,875 for the bike. He wanted to know if he could sue ebay over it if he didn't get $1,875 or more for the bike on the second go round. I had to laugh. What if the guy had given away his ebay login and password because the auction was not ended when he clicked on the link? He would probably want to sue ebay for that too. People kill me.