Just received the latest twist in eBay scams and thought I’d share it with the rest of the world via Google’s vast searching abilities.
Welcome to eBay,
We are pleased to inform you of the result of the eBay Online Winner programs held on the 28th of January 2004. Your e-mail address attached to ticket number 843-543075 drew lucky SEQUENCE NO.: 81210719 which consequently won in the 2nd category. You might have been approved for a lump sum pay out of US$ 50,000.00 (Fifty Thousand United States Dollars).
Please go: [TO THIS WEB SITE THAT LOOKS LIKE EBAY BUT REALLY ISN’T]
and enter your information to verify your account.
Regards,
Safeharbor Department,
eBay Inc
There are a number of reasons why I know this not to be true. A) Although I am a member of eBay, this is was sent to an e-mail address that is NOT registered with them. They have no reason to know that this one exists; B) the “enter information to verify your account” should send up enormous red flags. That’s the information scammers want. Since eBay already has all my account information, including an address to send the check to, why would they want the information again? That doesn’t make sense.
So this was forwarded to immediately.
Still, there are people who will fall for this scam, but I hope that, later, someone will drop a few of these phrases into Google and come across this post. Even if they don’t believe my contention that this is fake, they may wonder how two people could both win second prize in a lottery.
