Another eBay Scammer?

Triathlon Forum
1

I like to use eBay to search for bike goods and I sell on there as well. Unfortunately, it seems there are tons of frauds out there these days, making eBay a less viable channel for buying and selling.

Check this “seller” out: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZbjnhtn73zr

I was just doing a search on “Cervelo Soloist” today and found something offered by seller ID bjnhtn73zr. It looked odd.
-The seller has no record of any sales, but a good record as a buyer of Christmas decorations and other trinkets. And suddenly he/she/it is offering over 400 bike-related items.
-The seller is registered in the US, but the auction says item located in the UK.
-The seller doesn’t want to go through eBay’s “ask seller a question” channel but asks to go through email directly to pre-approve sales for fixed prices. Says the eBay account is full.

I lodged a complaint with eBay but I don’t think they’ll notice unless some others join in. As a seller it pisses me off that others are diluting the legitimacy of eBay as a reliable channel for buying and selling bike equipment. If you agree that this seller is a fraud, please send he/she/it a question (or 10) and be sure to report the seller to eBay. It looks to me like an eBay ID was compromised.

2

I had someone steal my eBay account recently and post about 400 items in under 2 hours. Many were bikes, but also laptops and flat screen tvs. It sucked. but eBay realized it within about 6 hours and shut it down. I had to talk directly to an eBay representative to get my account re-activated, but now it’s back to normal. If you use eBay it’s worth taking a look at your account every couple days to make sure you aren’t suddenly selling 20 lap-tops or 200 bikes… i was only tipped off b/c i got an email from eBay telling me i had changed my password (which i hadn’t).

3

Do you have any clue how your ebay account got hijacked? This seems to happen often. What’s going on?

Community PC?

IP hack?

Random?

4

Good to hear you sorted out your account.

Soon after I posted here I got an email from eBay warning me about correspondence with the account in question. Seems they were already onto the fraud. I shouldn’t have used my regular email account to mail them, though, as they could now try to hack my eBay account using the email connected with my account. OK, so now I’m getting paranoid…

5

I have no idea how the account got hijacked. my password is pretty specific. but i’ve heard that it’s pretty easy to get a passwork crank for accounts like eBay.

I only use my own computer so i think it must have been a bit random.

Like the next poster i got an email from eBay within about 12 hours saying my account had been shut down. The thing that amazes me is that whoever took over my account put up like 400 items including at least 100 bikes. if they had just put up 2 or 3 bikes and a couple lap-tops I might have never noticed and they could have easily done more of a rip-off job.

6

The reason they are easy to spot is that they have no idea about what they are trying to sell. When they get smarter we will all be in trouble.

7

Same exact thing happened to my wife’s ebay account. Within hours all of her listings were deleted and replaced with bogus listings. She was locked out for almost two days as they changed her password and took an act of God to get it reestablished. The FBI said this is very common on ebay now and they are aware of it but its very difficult to crack. She sells on average about 40-50 items a day. Because she does a lot of volume she is high profile and a target for scammers. They hacked into both her ebay and paypal accounts. Fortunately no $$ transactions took place but it could have been catastrophic.

8

It usually happens because people respond to spoof emails (ones that look like they’re from ebay) which ask them to verify their account by typing in their user and password. If you fall for it, game over. They log onto your account, change the password, and have some auctions.

I receive about one of these emails per week. They usually read something like this (of course it appears to have come from an ebay email address):

Alert ID : 0845913851

It has come to our attention that your eBay Billing Information
records are out of date. That requires you to update the Billing Information
If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update
your billing records, you will not run into any future problems with eBay’s online service.
However, failure to update your records will result in account termination.
Please update your records in maximum 72 hours.

Once you have updated your account records, your eBay session will not be
interrupted and will continue as normal. Failure to update will result in
cancellation of service, Terms of Service (TOS) violations or future billing
problems.

Please click here to update your billing records.

Please Note - If your account informations are not updated within the next 72 hours, then we will assume this account is fraudulent and will be cancelled. We apologize for this inconvenience, but the purpose of this verification is to ensure that your eBay account has not been fraudulently used.

We appreciate your support and understating, as we work together to keep eBay a safe place to trade.

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

Regards, Safeharbor Department (Trust and Safety Department)
eBay Inc.

Please do not reply to this e-mail as this is only a notification message.

Copyright 2005 eBay Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.
eBay and the eBay logo are trademarks of eBay Inc. is located at Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125

9

FWIW - Ebay must investigate every complaint. Imagine how many they receive each day. Sometimes it takes a day or two, but they’ll take this auction down at some point.

10

Then how do these folks make money?

Assuming the (bad) auction sells, do they divert funds to a different PayPal account or ask for the buyer to send a money order to a non-verified address? Holy red flag! I could understand the scam if they hijacked the PayPal account to transfer money in a hurry…but really can’t understand how this might work, considering all the emails that are generated and the effort it takes to change an email address on ebay. Then again, perhaps some seller check email each day…

12

First of all, these guys don’t accept PayPal. They ask for a wire transfer or Western Union. You really have to be a dolt to fall for it, but I suppose it’s painful (and expensive) to be dumb.

13

I imagine folks fall for it.

On a more important note, how’s the 386 coming along?

14

Ok. I received the frame, but I decided that it was too big (I was right inbetween a 57cm and 59cm). I sent it back and I’ve re-ordered another one in a 57cm. All the components should be arriving starting today:)

Pictures very very soon!