Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Maybe I just think this phishing scheme is extra-sneaky because I was dumb enough to fall for it. This is not the first time I've received a phishing attempt, but I've recognized them all as phishing attempts, usually initially by the unusual nature of the email, and then by the url in the address bar if I decided to actually investigate further. But today, I got an email that purported to be from an ebay buyer asking about an item. Of course, I don't have any items listed on ebay right now, but I still fell for it. I thought "what is this? I haven't sold anything on ebay in a good while..." and I clicked the item number which took me to a log in page. I happily logged in to see what this person could be talking about. This took me to my feedback page on ebay, which was the first moment I thought "uh oh, I've been had." Luckily, I realized it right then, went back to the email, clicked the item number link again, and saw the spoofed URL in my address bar that went completely unnoticed before. I quickly logged in to the
real ebay and changed my password. I also went and changed my paypal password just to be doubly safe (and I'll admit, they were the same!). I think I will be ok because I caught it in time and changed it. I reported the phishing email to ebay as well as via GMail's "report phishing" feature.
Here is what the email looked like:
The link pointed to ftp://0xdb.0x75.0xc0.0xbb/eBayISAPI.html which interestingly enough, now says "
You got phished, be more careful in future." Hopefully my reporting of the email had something to do with that. Interesting, too, that is an ftp:// link, not http:// Either way, hopefully I'll be ok with new passwords and hopefully I'm helping some others avoid getting phished. I always thought only non-web-savvy people could fall for it, but obviously you have to be on guard all the time, or you might slip up!