Spotting the Fraudulent Auction. : eBay Guides

The latest "Nigerian" Auction scam is the 24 hour, high value auction with a few special features.

Please note, not all 24 hour auctions are scams. The things to look out for are: 1/. The item will be very popular and of high value. 2/. As stated the auction will be of short duration. 3/. Somewhere towards the bottom of the text you will be invited to "buy it now" by emailing a Hotmail or Yahoo or some other email provider service with your offer to purchase this £1000 value item for £200, or even less. It may even specifically tell you not to contact via Ebay because the vendor can't, for some reason, access their Ebay emails.

If you are then foolish enough to go through with the sale because the vendor has very good feedback, prepare to wave goodbye to your money.

The reason this scam works is the clever bit. Mr Very Respectable Ebayer checks his normal Email account outside Ebay and finds a message "via Ebay" to say: What am I supposed to do with this £100 you sent me. Or alternatively: "If you don't complete the purchase of the Hoki koki 2000, I am going to place a non bidders strike against you".

Anxious to either be reimbursed this fictional £100, or alternatively, angry about this item which you never bid on in the first place, you click on the link in the Ebay page. It invites you to enter your Ebay Id. followed by your password. It then asks you to confirm your password. You do so. Suddenly your angry seller disappears, or your £100 doner vanishes and you are left wondering "what was that all about".

 Congratulations. you have just given the scammer all they need to set up a false auction using your details as a bone fide good seller. They do not want the buyer to "ask the seller a question" because that will go to you and alert you. Instead they put their own email addresses in the body of the text and make the offer too good to be true.

By the time you find out somebody has stolen your Ebay identity it is too late.

The moral of the story is: If you are presented with Mr Angry or Mr Benevolent, Get onto Ebay in your usual manner, not via their link, and check that the message is in My messages on Ebay. If its not. It's a scam.