Online scams have increased dramatically in the past year

Long a nuisance, phishing scams have exploded in the past year. The survey results suggest that 76 percent of all known or suspected phishing attacks occurred in the last six months, and 92 percent of known attacks happened in the 12 months preceding the study.

The study, which ended in April 2004, surveyed 5000 adult Internet users and found that around 3 percent of those surveyed reported giving up personal financial or personal information after being drawn into a phishing scam. Phishing scams use e-mail messages and Web pages designed to look like correspondence from legitimate online businesses.

The results suggest that as many as 30 million adults have experienced a phishing attack and that 1.78 million adults could have fallen victim to the scams.

Phishing attacks typically begin with e-mail messages purporting to come from established companies such as eBay, Best Buy, Citigroup, and others. Web page links within the e-mail messages direct recipients to Web sites disguised as official company Web pages where the recipient is asked to enter personal information such as their social security number, account number, password, or credit card information.

The U.S. federal authorities and leading Internet service providers such as America Online, Earthlink, and Microsoft have taken a more aggressive stance on the scams.

In March the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice moved to stop a phishing scam that had tricked hundreds of Internet users into giving credit card and bank account numbers to Web sites that looked like those of AOL and PayPal, part of EBay. The FTC charged Zachary Keith Hill of Houston with deceptive and unfair practices in that case, and the DOJ named Hill as a defendant in a criminal case it filed in Virginia.

A success rate of 3 percent is plenty to encourage further attacks. ISPs need to address the phishing problem to prevent the Internet and e-mail from being discredited as a medium for customer transactions.

Click HERE for examples of fake eBay e-mails that I have received in the past few months. Cecil

Here's the newest fake eBay message 5-28-04

From: suspension@ebay.co.uk

Date: Friday, May 28, 2004 07:56:34 PM

To:XXXXXXXXXXXX

Subject: TKO NOTICE: Update your credit card

Dear XXXX@XXXXXXwe are currently performing regular maintenance of our security measures.
Your account has been selected for this maintenance.

Protecting the security of your eBay auction account is our primary concern,
and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

In order to update your account information, you need to complete the following process!
If not, your account may behave anormally and errors may occur without notification.

Verify your identity

Your credit/debit card and bank account information along with your personal information will be verified instantly. All the data is protected by the industry standard SSL encryption. All information is required and is kept confidential in accordance with eBay's Privacy Policy.

Your credit/debit card and checking account information is used to verify your identity.

Enter Your Credit Card /debit Card Information

Payment Information

Card Type

Credit card /debit card number

Credit Card: Visa, MasterCard , American Express, Discover;
Debit Card: Visa, MasterCard

Expiration date

Month: Day: Year:
Leave day as --, if day on credit/debit card is not listed

CVV2 Code

Bank Name

Bank Routing

Checking Account

Your name on card

Social Security Number

xxx-xx-xxxx - if not applicable

Driver`s Licence

Date of birthday

Year

Phone Number

Please enter your billing address as it appears on your credit card bill statement

Billing address

City

State/province

Zip/postal code

Country

To completely validate your account type your old residence address (you had just before you actual address-if applicable)

Billing address

City

State/province

Zip/postal code

Country

Sorry for any inconvenience.
Important:eBay will never ask you the PIN Code-Electronic Signature Personal Identification Number ATM

	Sign me in after my passwords are updated.
Account protection tips \| Secure update(SSL)

Announcements \| Register \| SafeHarbor (Rules & Safety) \| Feedback Forum \| About eBay
Copyright © 1995-2002 eBay Inc. All Rights Reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. Use of this Web site constitutes acceptance of the eBay User Agreement and Privacy Policy

ANOTHER FAKE eBay MESSAGE 5-09-04

DON'T DO THIS

From: aw-confirm@ebay.com

Date: Sunday, May 09, 2004 09:06:35 PM

To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Subject: Security Check.

Please Sign In

Need Help?

For security reasons please re-enter your user ID and password.

eBay User ID

Forgot your User ID?

Password

Forgot your password?

Copyright © 1995-2004 eBay Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.
Use of this Web site constitutes acceptance of the eBay User Agreement and Privacy Policy.

MORE FAKE eBay MESSAGE April 21 - 2004

CHECK OUT THE MISSPELLINGS & GRAMMAR - DO NOT RESPOND TO THESE

Cecil

Thank you for submitting your change of e-mail address request. Instructions on completing the change have been sent to your new email address. Once the process is completed, your eBay-related email will no longer be routed to this email address. Change of E-mail address request was made from: IP Address: 168.143.113.124 ISP Host: bonnie.cyberpass.net If you or anyone with authorized access to your account did not make this change, please go to http://www.ebay.com Thank you for using eBay! http://www.ebay.com

***Urgent Safeharbor Departament Notice***</ strong>

Fraud Alert ID : 00626654

You have receive this email because you or someone had used your account to make fake bids on eBay. For security purposes, we are required to open an investigation into this matter. To help speed up this process, you are require to verify your eBay account by following the link below.

http://scgi.ebay.com/ verify_id=ebay&user=00626654

Please save this fraud alert id for your reference

Please Note - If your account informations are not updated within the next 72 hours, then we will assume this account is fraudulent and will be cancelled. We apologize for this inconvenience, but the purpose of this verification is to ensure that your eBay account has not been fraudulently used and to combat fraud

We apreciate your support and understading, as we work together to keep eBay a safe place to trade

Thank you for your patience in this matter.< /font>

Regards, Safeharbor Department (Trust and Safety Department)
eBay Inc.

Please do not reply to this e-mail as this is only a notification mail sent to this address cannot answered

Copyright 2004 eBay Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.
eBay and the eBay logo are trademarks of eBay Inc. is located at Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125

ANOTHER FAKE eBay MESSAGE April 12 - 2004

DO NOT RESPOND TO IT Cecil

Dear eBay member,

We recently noticed one or more attempts to log in to your eBay account from a foreign IP address and we have reasons to believe that your account was used by a third party without your authorization. If you recently accessed your account while traveling, the unusual login attempts may have been initiated by you.

The login attempt was made from:
IP address: 24.136.14.47
ISP Host: 24-136-14-47.c3-0.snb-ubr2.chi-snb.il.cable.rcn.com

By now, we used many techniques to verify the accuracy of the information our users provide us when they register on the Site. However, because user verification on the Internet is difficult, eBay cannot and does not confirm each user's purported identity. Thus, we have established an offline verification system o help you evaluate with who you are dealing with. The system is called ebay PowerSafe and it's the most secure eBay wallet so far.

If you are the rightful holder of the account, click on the link below, fill the form and then submit as we will verify your identity and register you to ebay PowerSafe.

To make eBay.com the most secure site to place or bid on your auctions,every user will be registered to PowerSafe.

If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to temporally suspend your account.

* Please do not respond to this e-mail as your reply will not be received.

Regards, eBay Inc.

ANOTHER FAKE eBay MESSAGE April 11 - 2004

DO NOT RESPOND TO IT Cecil

Change of E-mail address request was made from:
IP Address: 152.163.252.2
ISP Host: cache-ra02.proxy.aol.com

Buy with Confidence - Learn payment safety tips and more.

This eBay notice was sent based on your eBay account preferences. If you would like to review your notification preferences for other types of communications, click here. If you would like to receive this email in text only, click here.

As outlined in our User Agreement, eBay will periodically send you information about site changes and enhancements. Visit our Privacy Policy and User Agreement if you have any questions.

eBay and the eBay logo are trademarks of eBay Inc.

I RECEIVED A FAKE EBAY E-MAIL TODAY AND REPORTED IT TO EBAY AND THIS IS EBAY'S RESPONSE:

"Thank you for contacting eBay's Trust and Safety Department about email solicitations that are falsely made to appear to have come from eBay. These emails, commonly referred to as "spoof" messages, are sent in an attempt to collect sensitive personal information from recipients who reply to the message or click on a link to a Web page requesting this information.

The email you reported did not originate from, nor is it endorsed by, eBay. We are very concerned about this problem and are working diligently to address the situation. We are currently investigating the source of this email to take further action. You may rest assured that your account standing has not changed and that your listings have not been affected.

We advise you to be very cautious of email messages that ask you to submit information such as your credit card number or your email password. eBay will never ask you for sensitive personal information such as passwords, bank account or credit card numbers, Personal Identification Numbers (PINs), or Social Security numbers in an email itself. If you ever need to provide information to eBay please open a new Web browser, type www.ebay.com, and click on the "site map" link located at the top the page to access the eBay page you need.

If you have any doubt about whether an email message is from eBay, please forward it immediately to spoof@ebay.com and do not respond to it or click on any of the links in the email message. Please do not change the subject line or forward the email as an attachment."

DO NOT RESPOND THIS KIND OF E-MAIL

FOLLOWING IS A COPY OF THE FAKE E-MAIL I RECEIVED TODAY AND YES YOU MAY GET ONE TOO - BE CAREFUL AND SEND IT TO EBAY...Cecil

From: suspension@ebay.com

Date: Thursday, March 18, 2004 09:50:54 AM

To: undisclosed-recipients:,

Subject: ID Verify

Online scams have increased dramatically in the past year, study says.

A new study by a research firm found that the number of online scams known as "phishing attacks" have spiked in the last year and that online consumers are frequently tricked into divulging sensitive information to criminals.