Day: June 11, 2005

So, I’ve been on an ebay kick of late, trying to sell crap I have been meaning to sell for a while as well as some stuff I just don’t use.
That went pretty well. Then, I got the itch to upgrade my laptop. But, in order to do that, I decided I needed to get rid of the two I already have.
Well, selling laptops on ebay is an entirely new adventure than selling anything else online. There are a number of scammers watching the laptops sales who either send you emails with sob stories, or worse, use the buy it now option on your laptop, then send you the same goofy story.
Every single one of these comes from a newly created ebay user with zero feedback. Often, the accounts were created the day they started sending questions. Buy it now bastards are the worst, because then I have to spend time fighting with ebay to get credit for the auction, then start over. Africa appears to be the ‘destination’ of choice, for whatever reason.
The technical term of what these guys are trying to do is called ‘phishing,’ where they are trying to get users to submit personal information for identity theft.
Continue reading “Ah, the joys of ebay…”