For the last several weeks, I’ve been receiving regular emails to my gmail account supposedly from a seller of various expensive items on ebay. The emails state that, while I wasn’t the successful bidder, the seller would like to offer me a second chance at the item. Naturally, if I were to reply to his email, he’d ask for me to send him money via paypal or similar. After doing a bit of investigating, I was initially surprised to see that all of the items that were referenced in these emails were actually listed on ebay. After digging a little deeper, I was able to figure out exactly why I was getting these emails and it’s a pretty brilliant scam.
On each of the items in question, one of the unsuccessful bidder’s ebay userID was the same as my gmail username. The scammer is probably using some method to harvest ebay usernames for unsuccessful bidders and sending out scam emails to ebayusername@gmail.com, ebayusername@hotmail.com, and ebausername@yahoo.com and hoping that the actual bidder is at one of those addresses. Since the scam email would reference an item that the targeted bidder was actually interested in, and since there is a strong chance that people use the same name for their email address and ebay User ID, it’s a very clever scam. I’m surprised that nobody had ever thought of it before. For what it’s worth, one recent email originated from Romaina (89.40.162.251) via yourhostingaccount.com. The “X” headers also point to pow.eticket1 as a username, but I’m not sure whether that would be something “yourhostingaccount” could reconcile. As far as I can tell, yourhostingaccount.com doesn’t even have a main page.
Here’s a sample email:
I am the seller of the item title : (Itemname and number) and i have subscribed to the eBay Second Chance Offer Program.
Ebay Second Chance Offer Program is made to give another opportunity to non-winning bidders to purchace the wanted items.
Ebay asked me to email all my trustable bidders that expressed the interest to buy my product and ask them if they want to purchase it.
If you are interested in purchasing this item and remember that this is a secure way to deal,payment and items are sent and keept under ebay custody.The selling of this item through Second Chance Offer is in compliance with eBay policy, we will be able to exchange Feedback.Thank you for your cooperation and I wait your reply asap. or contact me at this email : roger.basil12@hotmail.com
I googled the email address, and it seems like at least a couple of other guys have experienced the same scam. Unfortunately, I didn’t make note of any of the other email addresses before deleting the messages, but I’m sure that the scammers must use several email addresses.
