Phishing
It turns out that eBay/PayPal do actually have some sort of security team. If you forward potential spoofed e-mails from them to spoof@ebay.com or spoof@paypal.com, resptively, it will be read. Well, almost. I decided to give it a try and see.
If the e-mail is easily detected as a spoof, you will get an automated response with some details.
If not, you will get an automated response indicated it is being determined. A day or so later, I received a response. It looks like it actually came from a real live person (even if it is a canned response — at least it’s specific to what the spoof e-mail said about my e-mail having been changed).
Hello,
Thank you for writing to eBay.
As you may have already suspected, this email did not originate from
eBay. These emails are commonly referred to as “spoofs” and are sent in
an attempt to collect sensitive personal information. We have reported
this email to the appropriate authorities as eBay has no control over
Web pages located outside of our site.Your email address has not been changed.
In the future, we ask you to be very cautious of any email that requests
you to submit information such as your credit card number or any
password. Now that you have received a spoofed email, your email address
has been collected and you may continue to receive spoofed emails to
your email address.If you have any doubt about whether an email message is from eBay,
please forward it to spoof@ebay.com. Do not respond to it or click on
any of the links in the email message. In addition, for faster
processing we ask that you do not change the subject line or the text of
the suspicious email in any way.If you believe that you may have already given your sensitive
information to someone pretending to be eBay, you should take action to
protect your identity. We have an eBay Help page with valuable
information regarding the steps you should take to protect yourself
further.http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/isgw-account-theft-reporting.html
In addition, to keep our community safe, eBay has created a tutorial to
teach our members about spoof emails. To access the tutorial, please
click on the link below:http://pages.ebay.com/education/spooftutorial/
Once again, thank you for alerting us to the spoof email you received.
Your vigilance helps us ensure that eBay remains a safe and vibrant
online marketplace.Regards,
Ludivina
eBay SafeHarbor
Investigations Team
