'Question from ebay member' - dodgy?

Got a suspicious email today which appears to be a legitimate ebay email from a member asking a question about something I'm selling. The only thing is, I'm not selling anything on ebay, and never have. I am a registered ebay users, though.

Theres a link in the email under 'see the description of the object'. My guard was down and I clicked on the link out of curiosty. It took me to a site that's all in Russian so I've no idea what it was about.

I don't know if this is some kind of scam or what. :/

Anyone else had an email like this?

It's a widespread phenomena.

Usually it's related either to scams, or they try to infect your system with a trojan: in any case they draw your attention in order to persuade you to click on a link. Just to be sure, you can take a look at the real address of the link before clicking.

Anyway, keep in mind that eBay always greets you with your real name plus your username, while the authors of these spam e-mails usually greet you with a "Dear eBay member" since they obviously don't know your personal data and send the same e-mail to thousands of addresses.

= -> kind of scam or what -> ignore, move on

Yes.
vs
It's a scam. I wasn't selling anything either. Report it to ebay and delete it.
P.S. I got a follow-up email asking why I was ignoring them. If you get one delete that as well. As a general rule of thumb delete anything remotely dodgy that comes via email is a scam.

Yeah, neither my real name or username are mention in the email. :/

It just says "eBay sent this message on behalf of an eBay member through My Messages. Responses sent using email will go to the eBay member directly and will include your email address."

Looks like I'm gonna have to do a scan for malware, now. >:(

Thanks Doiron.

Looks like you've just 'confirmed' your e-mail address to a spamming company, which will result in you being endlessly spammed to death now.

Common thing to do is hover your mouse over the link - typically the status bar will show the link as something like

http://bb.blah.ru/?49485980953

or something.

the number is linked to your e-mail address - when you click the link, it confirms in their database that your e-mail address is actually read by a human, so they will target it for much spammage.

Yeah, I usually do the 'hover mouse over link' thing.

There is no ?34938479384 type thing in the link, though.

I really don't want to get even MORE spam. I feel like an idiot. I should know better. :/

I get a notify from "Paypal" in my mailbox now and then, with the request to click some link, to update something..

If you inspect the address of that link then it might often start with some IP adress prior to the supposedly official paypal address.. google the IP adress and usually you'll read the true nature of the beast soon enough.

I get loads of stuff from paypal, bank of africa, ebay blah blah blah.

The way to tell if it MAY be genuine, if its got a link for you to 'login' then its probably junk , especially if the html code for the page shows a disguised link..

/me points at big10p and laughs.

HAHA sucker!

[/sympathy] :o)


...

Still in love with Juicy Fonts.

I became aware of this type of scamming when I'd been confirmed to have won and then get involved in a stair lift auction dispute, oh, and my name had been changed to bob, or something like that.

Scammers will try anything these days.

Hopefully I haven't done any damage: I got a follow-up email today asking why I haven't responded. There's a big 'reply' link (that I didn't click) that, no doubt, will lead to some crock page asking for my ebay/PayPal details, or something.

Oh, I also got a fake PayPal payment email today which no doubt works in the same way. Scam-tastic. :/