| Author | Message | ||
     Whodom |
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2444158831&categor y=49985 Have any of you seen this one on Ebay? An evidently pristine red XB12S listed for $5000 "buy it now". Seller has good feedback rating, but no location listed. It definitely appears to fall under the category of "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is". Hugh | ||
| Reepicheep |
Thanks Who... that link made my morning. I am sure it is either a typo or a scam, probably a typo, but I sent him an email to be on the "approved buyers list". This, of course, means he gets my email address, which could be used for spamming, but I get tons of that anyway and already have countermeasures in place. Anyway, we all might want to cut this guy a little slack and not crush his email inbox. If it is a correct listing, and he adds me, I will of course buy it immediately. Of course, Whodon and a hundred other badwebbers that are up this early have no doubt done the same thing, and would also "buy it now" in about half a heartbeat if given the opportunity. Anybody who hears back please post here... so we don't kill this poor guys mailbox because he accidentally typed a "5" instead of a "9"... | ||
| Reepicheep |
The sellers history looks inconsistent with the two auctions currently being run as well. It also has a lot of transactions, but all within the last couple months, and all for very inexpensive items. And it looks like they were all in England, but the bike is listed as being in the U.S. That might explain it. What if the buy it now was meant to be 5000 pounds instead of 5000 dollars? I don't know the exact exchange rate, but I think 5000 pounds would be a good but fair price for an XB12s this time of year. | ||
| Mikej |
There's some of this stuff happening on e-bay with bicycles. Use caution and keep an exit open at all times until verified. The "approved buyer" scam or deal is highly suspect. | ||
| Mikej |
I just looked, it appears his entire rating history is all as a buyer and there are no sales from him. Could be a new seller, or could have built himself a nice little good looking history setting this up. Might be legitimate, might not, I personally would hold off until you start seeing some positive feedback from buyers, and when you do look at the history of them as well to see if they also look legit or if they look like shill bidders. There are lots of games and angles in auciton scams. Not saying this is one, but the warning signs are there. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Agreed. The seller is located in the UK, but is selling the bike in the US. I bet they expected their buy it now price to show up in pounds, as they are registered in the UK, but the bike is in the US. When they put US as the location of the bike, I bet Ebay changed the 5000 pounds to 5000 $USD without telling them. That would make the "intended" price in USD about $8,518. I think. This would be a reasonable price for a highly motivated seller and a complicated transaction this time of year. But it could also very easily be a scam. The japanese sportbikes have had scams just like this running for months, this is a minor variation on a theme. The previous pattern was to list something like a GSXR-750 for a giveaway price, and once the bidding is done and the deal starts to materialize, it is an "overseas" seller that is has a friend or family somewhere in the states, and you are supposed to pay first then they ship it. I will pursue this one if it is really $5k US. But I would not transfer a penny to the seller directly without bike, title, bill of sale, and seller with verified identity an arms length away. Its a fun morning diversion, but I am 99.999% positive it is a scam or a typo. That being said, my odds of winning are still about 5 orders of magnitude better then winning the super-lotto, and I don't even have to spend $1 to play  | ||
| Dave |
Looks suspect to me. Reading other cycle forums, I've seen similar scams a number of times. Cycle forums sometime launch into a massive effort to prove/disprove validity of the seller. (kinda cool) The "pre-approved bidders" is a common piece. Someone should be able to run the VIN and see what comes up. DAve | ||
| Reepicheep |
There have also been a *bunch* of well done email scams that trick people into revealing their Ebay or paypal ID and password. I personally got one, that I was able to spot pretty quickly, but it was a really well done scam and would be pretty easy to fall for. If you look at the type of stuff this person bought, and the stuff they are now auctioning, there is a HUGE disconnect. Buy womens clothing and jewlery, sell a cruiser and a sportbike. My guesses (to two significant figures  ? 80% chance they meant pounds and it ended up USD$. 20% chance it is a stolen account. If it is a scam, the one thing I can't figure is that it requires pre-approval of buyers. Why? I would think they would want somebody to bite ASAP before somebody catches on. | ||
| Mikej |
The hard core harley guy in another thread, the one who makes threats with local chapter support, bought some womans nylons and such. The pre-approved buyers list is like an auctioneers hot list. Track who responds and who is most likely to be an active bidder, or an easy sucker, either way he'll have a good list of "approved" potential customers. "Pssst, I just snagged another beauty, isn't on ebay yet, will be giving my approved buyers first crack at it, reply with your bids,...." Think about it, what could someone want an approved buyer list for? And if someone is an approved buyer, isn't that sort of like being pre-approved for a new credit card, you just have to send in more identity proof to validate the card, and this guy may or may not want people to provide additional personal info in order to become approved. You know, like birth date and place, tax i.d. number, mother's maiden name (heh heh just in case you forget your password, ya right), bank account number, credit card number to attach deposits to from won auctions, and so forth. "Take the cheese, it's safe, and don't worry about that wire with the spring on it." To me: Pre-approved buyers list = send them more info about you. YMMV | ||
| Reepicheep |
Another thought... that would explain everything. These are bogus auctions, requiring the "preapproval" to collect email addresses for known Ebay members. No other purpose. Judging from the picture counter, he could have hundreds of email addresses already. Once they have these, they can later from some other account send this group those fake emails that try and get you to reveal your ebay / paypal ID and Password. Kind of a viral approach to stealing accounts. Once you have some, you can try and scam money with some, and use others to try and accumulate more emails for users to potentially steal accounts from. So if you do email the seller asking to be added to the buyers list, from then on assume everything in your inbox is suspect, and be ready to do heavy forensics. I am in that field anyway, so I consider this fun sport. Others might not. That would mean they don't really have the bike, and probably stole the picture from some other location.... Anybody recognize this picture?  | ||
| 99buellx1 |
I think I've seen that same picture on eBay before, seriously I do. Other than that, no clue, but the whole auction looks very suspect. Craig  | ||
| Mikej |
The bike to the right with the fishtail upswept pipes might give a clue to the source. | ||
| Reepicheep |
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=49985&item=244 1059896 Bingo Craig! I did not think they would be that obvious... | ||
| Reepicheep |
thats enough for me, reporting it to eBay now. | ||
| Bigdaddy |
Good call Reepi and Craig. Bust that rear-end! Greg | ||
| Lake_bueller |
Did you bother to look at their feedback? Not a single item sold by the seller. Only used as buyer. I had my account taken over by a pirate. I'm still not sure how it happened. I never respond to mails asking for my account info. It kinda funny though. I had 5 emails from various sources saying they were from PayPal and needed to verify my account. I contacted PayPal and they told me it was a scam to get your account info. Just another example of "buyer beware". | ||
| Mikej |
If your password is hackable they'll try that way. I don't know the current knockout on failed attempts at logging in to an account. We had one IT/MIS guy where I used to work who would disable the failed attempt counter then turn his hack-attach program loose on users, only three of us were ever able to keep him away from password discovery for more than 5 minutes. Include numbers an letters in your passwords and maybe other symbols if allowed to slow them down. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Lake... you could have had traffic sniffed. Any time you are using an URL that starts with "http" instead of "https", anything you type is trivial to intercept by anyone with physical access to the wire. Internet Cafe's, public wireless link, or school? 99% chance somebody is sniffing your traffic. Other locations (dial up, cable modem, dsl, company) depend on how the other end has configured their routers. Many are configured badly. And everyone upstream of you gets a crack at your traffic, and everyone downstream on the other end gets a crack at your data. FTP and Telnet have the same problem. Use https and secure shell (ssh) when you are doing anything you would not be willing to shout out at your local mall food court. You could also have been infected by a worm or trojan, and this was keystroke logging and reporting back to some remote zombie master. In this case, even https or ssh ain't gonna help you. Sounds like you were being careful Lake... For everyone else: Friends don't let friends connect to the internet without ALL OF THE FOLLOWING: 1) Up to date firewall, well secured, preferably a different physical appliance/box from the connecting computer. 2) Up to date antivirus software and definitions with frequently scheduled scans. 3) Up to date patches for your operating system, especially if you are running windows. 4) Monthly or better scans of the system for slimeware / addware packages... I like Add-Aware (www.lavasoft.de). 5) Don't ever run peer to peer file sharing apps like Kazaa, and expect to be safe. It's like going to a bad neighborhood to buy drugs, and being suprised that your car stereo gets stolen while you are there. Duh! You will also do yourself a huge favor by using webmail instead of outlook or outlook express. Heck, you are probably better off using ANYTHING other then either of those two apps to read internet facing email... | ||
| Firemanjim |
There are so many of these EBay scam bike sales now its pathetic.I scan the ads all the time just for fun and see countless brand new or almost new bikes being offered for way too cheap.I have seen similar threads on several other bike boards before.Just a bunch of thiefs!!! | ||
| Reepicheep |
Hee Hee
Alarming that it took ebay almost 24 hours to pull the auction from the time I reported it. Kinda sobering. I will continue to buy from eBay, but *only* with *both* PayPal and Visa (two layers of protection). If it is something like a bike purchase, it would have to me with cash in hand and them with title in hand before a penny changes hands... | ||
| Whodom |
Evidently there were a LOT of similar bike scams on Ebay in the last few days. Saw a post over at the Cycle World "American bikes" forum that there were a whole bunch of similar unbelievable deals on Harleys. I've been lucky on Ebay so far, but the most expensive thing I've bought was a $165 bass guitar. Like Reepicheep, I'd have to see a bike and legit title with my own eyes before I'd spend a dime on one. | ||
| Krassh |
Actually a good chance the real person had their Ebay Identity hijacked. | ||
| Reepicheep |
It was a hijacked account, I got an email from the real account owner. No such bike, no such deal, probably just harvesting email addresses for spam and other future account hijack attempts. | ||
| Krassh |
Actually if someone is unfortunate enough to complete the transaction before the account owner realizes it is hijacked the hijacker gets some free money. I get emails every once in a while saying ebay needs to update my info, it is a fake site run by these hijackers and with the info provided they hijack your good rating and ruin someones day. | ||
| Firemanjim |
Krassh,I got another of those same e-mails again,today.Looked real official with Ebay logos and all,but they wanted not only my credit card #'s but also my drivers license #,SS # and my frikkin' bank checking account #'s.Can you f---ing believe that crap. | ||
| Krassh |
If you hold your mouse over some of the links on that page you will see an IP address instead of the URL for Ebay at the bottom of your browser in the status bar. They look real offical with some valid links that actually take you real pages in Ebay. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Krassh.. that is not even enough sometimes. I got a very good one, where every link was legit except the URL on the SUBMIT button, and even that was nicely masked. It was tricky for even a professional web developer to spot (except that I already knew about the scam so I knew it was fake when it showed up). |
