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Email and Computer Security

Spoof / Fake Email Example: eBay

This is typical of the email you may receive:

It may seem genuine, it even has the "eBay" logo, but it is a fake. There are several giveaways. Firstly if you've never used eBay then you would not have an account that needed updating!

Most trustworthy organisations would not ask for you to update your information in this way, you would normally be directed to the appropriate message next time you logged in to the genuine site.

The underlined link in this email is not really a link. All the text in the email is a single image, the entire image was a link. The destination web page does not correspond at all to what appears in the message.

The wording shown in the text of a web site address link is not necessarily the real URL of the page you would be taken to. If you had clicked on the link in the message you would be sent to the web page below.

Again it looks genuine, but there are clues that it is not a real "eBay" page. The web address in the "address bar" of the browser shows the numerical IP address (207.150.192.12), most web sites would show their conventional URL.

Entering your details and clicking the "Sign In" button would have sent your details to the hoaxer so that they could "steal" your on-line identity. They could make bids and buy items, charged to your eBay account and have them delivered to an address of their choice.

If you think you entered your personal financial information into a spoof site, contact the company immediately.

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