The ebay scammer is back.

[Nos4r2]

Originally Posted by Mollulnan

If we bid, win and obviously don't pay. He gets clobbered for the commision charge regardless. It happened to me, A girl bought a £1250 sailing dinghy from me, didn't pay and I got caught for £68 worth of Ebay fees!! So on a £1000 outboard ,He'd be hit for approx £55. It's interesting to hear other's experiences with Ebay. They're monopolistic shite!

Not sure you understand here- He's using a stolen account. He can only use it for one 'block' of auctions and then it'll be sussed. It's not in his name anyway,so why should he bother paying the fees? It's not like Ebay have an address they can find him at...

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by Nos4r2

He's using server-based webmail for email so all you'll get is the server IP.

I don't know specifically about Yahoo, but most web based email IS traceable

Originally Posted by Nos4r2

This guy is CLEVER-and if anyone DOES get his IP then unless you know how to make your IP completely untraceable DON'T try and hack him-he's clever enough to use an exploit on Ebay's own front page. Expect trouble if you try it.

He's can't be THAT clever though. It's easy enough to change your IP address periodically (or after doing something that may expose you to risk). And firewalls are fairly difficult to penetrate - most people are at risk because their firewalls have more holes than a gorgonzola cheese!

[roycruse]

Originally Posted by Richard B

It's easy enough to change your IP address periodically

If anybody wants to disguise their ip address all they need to do is dial the internet by one of the many 1p / minute service providers and start the number with 141 to with hold your phone number - you will be assigned a dynamic ip address from a pool and will be completely untracable (well without a police warrent to pull your phone records anyway)

If i was going to be doing anything dodgy thats what i would do

[Nos4r2]

There's other ways-but that's not the point. Hacking the guy assumes someone can get his IP-and I don't think he's stupid enough to let that happen.

[Mollers]

Originally Posted by Nos4r2

Not sure you understand here- He's using a stolen account. He can only use it for one 'block' of auctions and then it'll be sussed. It's not in his name anyway,so why should he bother paying the fees? It's not like Ebay have an address they can find him at...

In order to get any money from this scam he has to have an account of some discription. Sales will be credited. Ebay fees debited. Ebay (like the taxman) will grab their bit before he gets his.

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by roycruse

start the number with 141 to with hold your phone number - you will be assigned a dynamic ip address from a pool and will be completely untracable (well without a police warrent to pull your phone records anyway)

If i was going to be doing anything dodgy thats what i would do

Works without the 141 as well, that just obsfurcates you from the dial-up logs.

[Nos4r2]

Originally Posted by Mollulnan

In order to get any money from this scam he has to have an account of some discription. Sales will be credited. Ebay fees debited. Ebay (like the taxman) will grab their bit before he gets his.

IT's SOMEONE ELSES ACCOUNT. It'll still be linked to the original owners fee payment methods. He only has to get away with it for a few days remember...I very much doubt the account holder has noticed it's been hacked yet!

Ebay can't grab anything from the guy without authorisation of some kind anyway.

[Nos4r2]

1)He spams a load of phishing emails using addresses collected from a 'harvester' of published email addys and people fall for it, giving him their ebay ID and password-and if he's lucky their bank details so he has somewhere to get the scammed funds deposited. As long as the ebay accounts he steals are seller accounts that's all he needs to start listing.All the fees incurred by his listing and final value fees will get billed to the poor sod he nicked the account from-but not til the account's next invoice date-by which time he's long gone.

2)He uses a stolen account to set up listings with the same type of item,payment method and text style as he'll use to scam people. He gains positive feedback by using "buy it now" auctions and 'buys' his own scam items with different stolen accounts. This is to inspire confidence in the way he wants to be paid. Those that DO look a little harder will see the consistency that he wants to set them at ease.

3) He only leaves feedback for the account he's going to commit the main scam from-so the owners of the other accounts don't notice their feedback is going up. How many of you last looked at your own 'feedback left for others' page?

4)The accounts he uses to list the scams from are all accounts that have had no buying/selling feedback left in the last 3 months so he can assume that they aren't in use. He changes the email addresses for these accounts so that any questions,details and notifications are sent to him on an email address he's set up specifically for that scam alone.

5)When the auction ends he is automatically given the email address for the winning bidder. He contacts them with his scam payment method and stolen bank account details directly-not through ebay's system so ebay can't track it. I'd like to bet he tries using a brute force password cracker to try and hack the paypal account for that email if there is one.

5a)When the auction ends he sends second chance offers to all bidders to maximise his scam.

6) As soon as you transfer into his stolen bank account you've shit out-he's got your money and he's not in the UK so there ain't a lot you can do...Not sure how he actually collects the cash but by that time it's too late anyway.

Quite clever isn't he...

[Swifty]

So as an Ebay account holder what can I do to make sure he's not surfing on my credentials. Can it be secure?

[LURCHER]

I asked if I could view the engine via 'ask the seller a question ' within 24 hours I had an email that appered to be from Paypal advising I had received and instant payment of £20 from John Smith to my account . As I am selling a few items I assumed it was from one of my buyers . By chance I had my Paypal account open on another page so did not 'click' on the link . Of course there was no payment and I realised then that the Email was a spoof and had I clicked on the link and signed in via that route he would have got my password etc. Close shave so watch out !

[Nate]

I'm beginning to think this guy's like a virus - any contact risks infection! It's good that we've got people like Nos4r2 on our side though - imagine the chaos if he embraced the dark side!

I'm happy to put in an outrageously high bid on an O/B, but my ebay account is pretty obviously my own - email address, bank details etc. Am I at risk from the scammer if I bid?

[Mollers]

He's done a hell of a lot of work for possibly not a massive return, unless he's replicating the scam in other countries. Those outboards are not going to fly away as buyers are generally wary of non paypal payments, as they are totally unprotected. Also, who on earth would pay in excess of a grand for a nasty old Nissan 25 that nobody has heard of in this country?!!. I'm not sure if some of the bidders on these engines aren't bogus also,to try and show interest and confidence in the item. If so, Ebay do have software tools to pick up "Shill" bids. Whether they bother to do anything is another matter.

[Nos4r2]

Originally Posted by Swifty

So as an Ebay account holder what can I do to make sure he's not surfing on my credentials. Can it be secure?

Always use the 'hide my email' tickbox when asking questions.

NEVER enter your ebay ID and password into anything but the sign-in page of ebay-and only do that if you've manually typed 'www.ebay.co.uk' into your address bar.

Use https://www.paypal.com for paypal payments-it's a straight link to a secure connection-rather than http://www.paypal.com.

NEVER use a link in an email purporting to be from ebay.

Clean your cookies and temp internet files regularly and most importantly, use a spyware remover as well as antivirus and firewall-and scan for and remove all spyware regularly. Some spyware logs keystrokes-it doesn't take much to get a user ID and password from that.

[Nos4r2]

Originally Posted by Mollulnan

He's done a hell of a lot of work for possibly not a massive return, unless he's replicating the scam in other countries. Those outboards are not going to fly away as buyers are generally wary of non paypal payments, as they are totally unprotected. Also, who on earth would pay in excess of a grand for a nasty old Nissan 25 that nobody has heard of in this country?!!. I'm not sure if some of the bidders on these engines aren't bogus also,to try and show interest and confidence in the item. If so, Ebay do have software tools to pick up "Shill" bids. Whether they bother to do anything is another matter.

he's got away with at least £1500 so far-and what he's done really wouldn't take that long. A couple of days behind the keyboard isn't that much-and he's not doing just outboards-see the private reg's for cars too under ID jambograz and there's another one but the ID eludes me right now.

The bids on the Nissan...well, wait and see...

Just got a mail from ebay:-

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to write to eBay.

Unfortunately the items recently listed with this account were the
result of an unauthorised account takeover. We were not aware of this
until some time after the listings appeared on the site. Once we became
aware of this activity, immediate action was taken. We are now restoring
the account to its owner.

Thank you for being part of the eBay community.

Regards,

Clare Williams
SafeHarbour Team

[Nos4r2]

Originally Posted by Nate

I'm beginning to think this guy's like a virus - any contact risks infection! It's good that we've got people like Nos4r2 on our side though - imagine the chaos if he embraced the dark side!

I'm happy to put in an outrageously high bid on an O/B, but my ebay account is pretty obviously my own - email address, bank details etc. Am I at risk from the scammer if I bid?

Yes. Don't-unless you're absolutely sure what you're doing.He can't find out your bank details unless you personally give them to him, but you can guarantee you'll get loads of 'phishing' email if you do. I've bid on one, but the account I've used isn't registered to the same email as my paypal and doesn't have enough personal details on to find me to scam in my name.

[MikeCC]

Once we became aware of this activity, immediate action was taken. We are now restoring the account to its owner.

Is that for tooeaglesgaragesale? Engines are still listed?

[Nos4r2]

Yes apparently it is-unless they have to be removed by the new account owner? I'm going to let bids run and see if I get a 2nd chance offer on the Nissan. If I do then I'll know the hacker still has the account and will leave feedback accordingly.

[Nos4r2]

Hacker's still got the account. Just got this after 'winning' the 1st 2 auctions.Anyone want to contact barclays as this account is definitely stolen.

John K please note these are NOT valid details-they are what the scammer sent.



The total amount of the item including postage* is JJ437.95

I will accept payment by bank transfer into my account:

Bank: Barclays
name: mr T. Katori
sort code: 20-11-39
account number: 30713562


As soon as you email me to confirm payment, your item will be shipped to
you.
The delivery** will take up to 5 business days.

Thank you again for bidding, please check back my future items.
It’s been a real pleasure doing business with you.


* Postage fees include packaging, insurance, and postage charges.

** The delivery takes up to 5 business days upon receiving payment
(usually it is about 3-4).


Take a look at the feedback....

[roycruse]

The sort code belongs to this bank

Barclays Bank plc
Bournemouth Town Branches
P.O. Box 1
Bournemouth BH1 1ER

I would suggest phoning the branch and asking to speak to the manager and explain the situation and ask them to contact the account holder with your warning.

[Nos4r2]

The scammer's made his feedback private...

Reported his account to barclays fraud dept...

Got a phone number for ebay UK too... and rang them.