OK this is the most serious message I have and hope to post!
No real need to reply just maybe sticky to help others out.
Over the last few days I have been scammed out of £1090 for a laptop on eBay,
I DONT WANT OTHERS TO MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE!
NEVER EVER BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU READ ABOUT PAYPAL BEING SAFE
ITS NOT!!!
OK, when it comes to PCs and Internet most of you know I am very knowledgeable, if you don't then I am
but even the best can be had by a good con-artist.
I had sold a laptop, like my other 120 transactions on eBay no problems, I've spotted the past scams and not been caught, I don't have any dead relatives that have left millions, although the amount of emails saying I have a dead relative there's no one left in my family and I am a multi-billionaire!
OK on with the scam!!
I received an email from paypal saying I had received £1090 for the eBay item, I checked it out, check paypal and yes it was legit and there it was!
OK I should have been cautions when the person was asking for next day delivery, but hey the moneys there in paypal, its all confirmed and there..
I looked at the shipping address and it was US, OK the guy could be over here or moved here, I contacted him and said the address was no verified and I would not ship, I then received an email from paypal saying he had a new confirmed address and safe shipping was now possible, great all looks good, I have the money, I have a confirmed address.
WRONG
The confirmation email was fake, but my god a dam good fake, all the URLs were real paypal links, it had the correct transaction numbers, EVERYTHING looked genuine, I looked at the message source and all was OK, no links with aliases to some fake server to steal info, The give away is in the Internet headers which does not show unless you look at the properties of the email in a program like Outlook or Mozilla, with some web based email services you may not be able to check this, the headers came from a company that hire out server space and virtual servers
So I have shipped to an unconfirmed address and he has contacted his bank and pulled the money back!!
The email said it was confirmed, but after speaking to paypal they say they don't send emails like that, scammers are inventive, and I guess paypal cant make people aware of every email they are likely to send
OK my advice to people for what its worth!
Be safe with large amounts/Expensive Items, or small!
Check the email, and double check it
Check the money is in paypal don't trust an email saying it is
PAYPAL DO NOT SEND EMAILS SAYING NEW ADDRESS CONFIRMED!
I would say to the person, you will only ship once the money is transferred from your paypal to bank, but even this is not safe paypal can just pull the money back after from your account!
just have a read of
http://www.paypalsucks.com/
I guess the only safe was is cash and check its real then!!
I'm now contacting eBay, paypal and the police, even trying the company that the spoof email came from as its a hosting server to find out the IP and get the ip traced to an address that it was logged in to from.