We receive these e-mails all the time and I thought I’d have a little fun at the scammer’s expense while providing you with a few keys to spot the spoof. We’ve done this before in another post called The Craigslist/eBay Car Scam and we’re proud that that post has save innocent people thousands of dollars from scams.

First, a “spoof”, or “phishing” e-mail is an e-mail that appears to come from a reputable source but is really coming from a scam artist. They usually look pretty realistic, but there’s always a few sloppy things that tip you off to the fake.

We received this one this week and I’ve outlined the tip-offs in red (click the image to enlarge it). First, eBay NEVER uses a hyphen. It’s always a lowercase ‘e’ and upercase ‘B’. They’ve trademarked the style and anything that looks different is a fake. This message also states at the top that your user name is included to prove that it is coming from eBay. However, as you can see there is no username included. Thanks for the clue, scammer!

Scrolling to the bottom, there are a few more things to point out (click the image to enlarge it). The scammer conveniently gives you a link which is supposed to take you to this item that they’re asking you about. Of course, if you hover your cursor over this link and look at the bar at the bottom of your brower, you’ll see a completely different link with a domain most likely housed in an Eastern Eurpoean country. When you go to that fake link, it will present you with a eBay look-a-like screen that asks you to sign in to your account to see this item. Here’s another tip, you don’t have to sign in to your eBay account to view an eBay listing).

Below that you’ll see that this fake buyer has a 100100% positive feedback score. Not bad, I wish mine was that high. Last, notice that every other date on this message is formatted in the started US format of MM/DD/YYYY. However, this person has been a member since 26-May-2006. Completely different formatting.

Often the text of these e-mails will try to scare you by yelling at you because they haven’t received their item and they will report to you and have your account closed. This one was nicer, trying to kill us with kindness instead od scaring us. Look for the warning signs before jumping into action to save your account status. If you receive a suspicious e-mail, forward it to eBay at spoof@ebay.com so their Trust & Safety department can go after the scammer.

Have you received a scam that has other tip-offs? If so, leave a comment about it below so you can help others steer clear of the scammers.

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