Don Xml's Grok This

	Beware Of Spoofed eBay and PayPal Emails For some reason over the last couple days, I’ve been getting a lot of spoof emails pretending to be from eBay and PayPal.  Considering the email account they are using isn’t registered to an eBay or PayPal account, they are pretty easy for me to spot, but it may not be so easy for others.  If you get an email from eBay or PayPal stating that you need to verify some information, odds are that this email is bogus.  DO NOT use the links included in the email.  If you think that the email is valid, open up a new browser and navigate to the site yourself (do not use the links), and then log in.  If the vendor really needs to verify some info, they will let you know when you log in.  But, I’d suggest just forwarding the suspected email to the spoof account at eBay or PayPal (i.e spoof@eBay.com).  This way they can validate the email for you, and if it is bogus, they will be able to track down the idiots that sent it and torture them by forcing them to watch Barney videos 24x7 for a couple years (if that isn’t torture, I don’t know what is).  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Published Wednesday, May 05, 2004 12:17 PM by donxml Filed under: Random Access Comment Notification If you would like to receive an email when updates are made to this post, please register here Subscribe to this post's comments using RSS Comments Mike Prilliman said: Yah, I have been getting a lot of these lately too. A definite clue for me is that these 'notices' are coming in on an e-mail account that is no longer associated with paypal. I got one today that notified me that my account was would be suspended on May 15th if I didn't act NOW. Out of curiosity I copied the hyperlink into my browser to see wtf? Clue 2 it was bogus was when I could see that the url was immediately redirected out of any 'real' paypal.com domain. Now, for the best part - in addition to asking all of your personal information (login, password, etc) there are places for you to happily provide your debit card number and PIN!!!! God help the unsuspecting 'casual' PC users in the world, it just baffles me how many people continue to fall for these scams. PS - I am still suffering traumatic shock from second-hand exposure to Barney when my kids were younger. May 5, 2004 1:25 PM

About donxml

I’m an independent consultant, specializing in .Net solutions architecture, based out of New Jersey who also doubles as an evangelist for XML, Domain Driven Design, enterprise architecture and .Net. I do not work for Microsoft, the W3C or any other big company that you may know of (at least not yet). I’ve been an indie for over ten years, and although I’ve been tempted a couple times to take a job with companies like Microsoft, I’ve haven’t found something better than my current situation. I work mostly with the large pharmaceuticals that are based here in New Jersey, and usually find myself on long term contracts. Definitely not the prototypical indie consultant, but it lets me dedicate time to my non-income generating activities like the developer community stuff, plus financing open source projects like XPathmania and MVP-XML. If you would like to talk to me about doing some contract work, just contact me via the contact page. My rates vary widely, depending on lots of different variables, but mostly distance from Jersey, and type of work. Plus, I’ve been known to donate some of my code for various projects.