Auction Bytes Survey on eBay/PayPal Phishing Attempts

Auction Bytes did a survey - which reports that 98 percent of the respondents have seen "phishy" e-mails from eBay/PayPal. Even worse, 14 percent of the people surveyed answered these e-mails.

Phishing is a ploy to get an unsuspecting person to give up personal and or financial information, which is later used (normally) to commit financial crimes.

Sloppy password protection was another problem cited in the survey - which could cause an account to be compromised, also.

In the auction world - this leads to legitimate accounts being hijacked and used for illegitimate purposes (auction fraud).

Link to Auction Bytes survey, here.

Using a "trusted" seller's account, fraudsters sell items that are never received and even hire dupes to launder the stolen proceeds for them.

Depending on how sophisticated the "account hijackers" are -- they can also gather personal and financial information -- which is later used identity theft schemes.

PIRT (Phishing Incident Reporting and Termination Squad) - tracks phishing attempts and recently reported that eBay/PayPal are the two most "phished brands."

It pays to be AWARE on auction sites to avoid unpleasant and (costly) shopping experiences. Here is a post, I did on how to avoid being a victim:

How to Protect Yourself on eBay

I also did a post on a company that bonds eBay sellers - which guarantees their transactions:

buySAFE Protects it's Customers from Fraud on eBay