Ebay Scams: The Description Scam and Phishing

Everyone and their grandma has an eBay account these days, and as such eBay is a choice avenue for would be scammers to perpetrate their filthy crimes. There are two main ways in which you may be scammed during your eBay escapades. Learn to avoid phishing and the dread eBay description scam, and you shouldn’t have any problems.

eBay Phishing

Phishing is when people receive an email from someone claiming to be eBay. Typically these emails will have the eBay logo and other pictures that a real eBay email may contain. Targets will be informed that their account information needs to be updated or that suspicious activity has occurred connected to their account and the account will be shut down unless immediate action is taken.

The goal of the phisher is for targets to click on the hyperlink in the email that will take them to their own site. These sites are usually clones of eBay and when users input their login information the scammers will take control of their eBay account and place orders or attempt to attain even more sensitive financial information, such as PayPal login info.

One simple way to never fall victim to eBay phishing is to NEVER access your account from an email. Simply go to eBay using your web browser manually. If there is some problem you’ll see a message in your ‘My eBay’ page.

The eBay Description Scam

Okay, I’ve seen seasoned eBay Powersellers fall prey to this lowlife trick, so be wary. And don’t make big eBay purchase when you’re sleep deprived! Basically, the eBay description scam uses tricky wording to make users think they are buying something different than what is actually being sold. When the user tries to report the incident, confronted description scammers hide behind semantics, claiming that the words accurately described what was being sold.

Examples of the eBay Description Scam

You go on eBay to buy a new amp for your car stereo. You know exactly what you want and type in “alpine MRA-F350”. After looking around for a while you find one that is listed for much less than the others. You decide that fortune is smiling upon you and commit to buying the item. A week goes by and then one day you step onto your porch and discover the package –but something’s wrong. The package is way to light to be a stereo amp. Long story short: after sending countless unanswered emails you finally return to the item description page and notice the text “Alpine MRA-F350 box”. Quite literally, you have purchased the box for said amplifier.

What about the seasoned Powerseller that left his guard down? After years of selling MTG cards on eBay these friends of mine had gotten really quite skilled at sizing up the people they bought their inventory from –players selling their used MTG cards. Though they’d become nearly impervious to being duped by sheisty MTG nerds, it was a simple description scam that got them. After paying for a large and expensive collection of cards, a box showed up with only the cheapest and moderately valued cards. None of the rare and expensive cards in the item description had been included. Looking back at the item’s description it was discovered that the cheap cards were preceded by the words ‘You’ll get:’ and the rare cards were preceded with the words ‘You may probably get’. I kid you not. Moral of the story, read the whole description and read it well!