Phishing Scam Targets Musicians Bidding on used gear on Fraud Plagued eBay

[mandy]

Just when you think it’s safe to go shopping on eBay for used gear, like a vintage tube mic, or analog keyboard, the phishing artists have to ruin my day. Phishing, is the practice of trying to fool you into going to a website pretending to be a legitimate site, like a bank or eBay, or to contact somebody about a product or service through “real looking” email communications.

I had this happen perhaps twice in six years and over 300 transactions on eBay, many for buying or selling old gear, but three times in the past 10 days — targeting me with phony “second chance offers” to buy music gear — definitely shows a concerted effort. In asking around, I found this was not an isolated case, and every musician I asked had received such an offer in their email. So, musicians need to be a little more watchful in email they get from eBay right now (well, really all the time, sadly)...

full article: http://enewschannels.com/2006/09/09/enc146_203701

[stardust]

Without reading the article, I'll say that it certainly is not limited to musicians.  EVERYONE is targeted -- 100% -- on ebay.  As a seller, within hours of listing an item, you're targeted with a fraudulent TKO, ASQ or PayPal email. 

And within three days of opening a store on ecrater, I was targeted twice by would-be scammers.  It's just nuts everywhere...  >