Messing with Scammers :)

[yurimxpxman]

It would help if we kept everyone with an e-mail account informed of how to tell if something's legit. All they need to know is not to click the links. If something looks legit, then you can go to the website yourself to check it out. Even the URLs can be deceiving.

[Blondie]

I had to look twice at some of them. Went to my ebay inbox to double check - of course there's nothing in there...

[Quakindude]

Originally Posted by yurimxpxman

It would help if we kept everyone with an e-mail account informed of how to tell if something's legit. All they need to know is not to click the links. If something looks legit, then you can go to the website yourself to check it out. Even the URLs can be deceiving.

Yep, I've told my family that if they get an email saying to check into their accounts, to ALWAYS manually enter the address in their addy bar. Never to click on links in mail.

I once received an Email just like Blondie's on the previous page. So I entered the addy in the address bar and low and behold, there was a message for me. We had canceled the credit card Ebay deducted payments from. So had I of not paid with my Debit card, I had about 4 days left before they would have placed a hold on my account.

I really should check my email more often!

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by One4yu2c

I strongly disagree with this. Being enthusiasts, or at the very least, computer savvy, it's easy to take our own web/PC experience for granted. As Screwball alluded to, some of these phishing attempts are getting very polished. The ones with misspelled words and terrible grammar are pretty easy for most to weed through, but some do an excellent job of spoofing their origin. For all intents and purposes, the email looks legit at a glance, as does the forwarding link and destination page. Most of us here are both aware of such scams and know how to verify authenticity, but we don't represent the vast userbase out there that couldn't tell you the difference between DDR and DDR2. All of us can probably list at least one family member or friend that falls into this category, if not several (I sure can!).

To say that victims of identify theft deserve what happens is like saying those not savvy with automobile repair deserve to get ripped off by a mechanic, and it also goes against the mission of HardwareLogic. We exist because "Every Enthusiast Starts Somewhere," and that elitist mindset is something we try very hard to avoid.

I second that. There's seriously quite a few times i've almost fell for it. Well made scams could fool anyone.
Besides the human in itself is incredibly unreliable, and lord knows that with good words you could make anyone say what you want to hear. *wink*

[screwballl]

I get calls all the times about these. the phishers, scammers and other problematic emails. I work for an ISP as tech support so I am one that tells all these people to NEVER click these links and to always report emails to the real site (ie: spoof@paypal.com)

[Zambini]

actually ebay and paypal and everyone always says in their emails "DO NOT CLICK LINKS SENT IN EMAILS, OPEN YOUR BROWSER URL AND TYPE IN www.(website).com INSTEAD"

i've even seen some scamails say that at the bottom, but offer a link to paypal.com on the bottom. lol

[Hitman]

I usually get these emails in Hotmail. Since my hotmail account is in no way associated with My Ebay or Paypal, its usually pretty obvious its a fake. Another way to tell if its fake, is to login to your Paypal or Ebay account and check your messages there. If it doesn't match any of the messages in your account its FAKE.