eBay Phishing Bug Allows Phishing Using Real eBay Web Addresses   3/6/2005 - 1,076 views,

While eBay’s users, and consumers in general, have become more careful about clicking on links which show up uninvited in email, this particular phishing bug is insidious because the link in the phishing email is a genuine eBay link, and the user is never aware that they have gone through the genuine eBay link to the phisher’s look-alike site.

An eBay spokesperson, Hani Durzy, explained that users have become “more aware of phishing, but the bad guys have become much better at it, so it’s not going to go away overnight. The key for us is really about educating Internet users to protect themselves in the same ways they do offline.”

So, what can you do about it? What if you get email from eBay asking you to go to their site - how can you be sure it’s legitimate, and will take you to the real eBay site?

Aunty recommends that if you get an email purporting to be from eBay, and you aren’t sure whether it’s real or not, rather than clicking on the link in the email (don’t do that!), just go to eBay directly, typing eBay’s address in your browser, and log in to your account. If there is really some action which eBay needs you to take, you’ll get a message from eBay about it when you log in to your account.