With so many fake email gimmicks now and people trying to exploit your personal info over the Internet, it can be helpful to know how to spot them. First off any email that asks you to verify your user name and password is usually always a fraud. I'll use one I received as an example.
As you can see at first glance this may look legit, even the header says eBay.com, however that can easily be faked.
When clicking on the link in the email this is what we see. It may look like an official eBay page, but it's not. It's a scam to get you to enter your account details, which would then be logged and used for fraudulent purposes.
The first thing that is noticeable is the url at the top, it doesn't say www.ebay.com, instead there is a strange ip address. I am using Firefox as my browser and there is an extension called Show IP which shows the website's IP down on the status bar and gives you the option of tracing where an IP is originating from when you click on it. If you don't have this you can go to DNSStuff.com and enter the ip into the WhoIS lookup box. The information for the fake eBay page comes up as follows:
inetnum: 219.141.0.0 - 219.141.127.255
netname: CHINANET-GZ
descr: CHINANET Guizhou province network
descr: Data Communication Division
descr: China Telecom
country: CN
admin-c: CH93-AP
tech-c: DL72-AP
mnt-by: MAINT-CHINANET
mnt-lower: MAINT-CHINANET-GZ
changed: **********@ns.chinanet.cn.net 20021016
status: ALLOCATED NON-PORTABLE
source: APNIC
person: Chinanet Hostmaster
address: No.31 ,jingrong street,beijing
address: 100032
country: CN
phone: +86-10-66027112
fax-no: +86-10-58501144
e-mail: **********@ns.chinanet.cn.net
e-mail: *********@ns.chinanet.cn.net
nic-hdl: CH93-AP
mnt-by: MAINT-CHINANET
changed: **********@ns.chinanet.cn.net 20021016
remarks: hostmaster is not for spam complaint,please send spam complaint to *********@ns.chinanet.cn.net
source: APNIC
person: dan lu
nic-hdl: DL72-AP
e-mail: ******@public.gz.cn
address: 3. east yanan road of guiyang
address: 550001 china
phone: +86-851-6861469
fax-no: +86-851-6857020
country: CN
changed: ******@public.gz.cn 20030122
mnt-by: MAINT-CHINANET-GUIZHOU
source: APNIC
This IP address is not registered to eBay but to a dan lu in China.
If we type in www.ebay.com. We can see the IP address for eBay using the ShowIP extension.
When running a WhoIS report on this IP we get the following results:
OrgName: eBay, Inc
OrgID: EBAY
Address: 2145 Hamilton Ave
City: San Jose
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 95008
Country: US
NetRange: 66.135.192.0 - 66.135.223.255
CIDR: 66.135.192.0/19
NetName: EBAY-1
NetHandle: NET-66-135-192-0-1
Parent: NET-66-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: SJC-DNS1.EBAYDNS.COM
NameServer: SJC-DNS2.EBAYDNS.COM
NameServer: SMF-DNS1.EBAYDNS.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 2001-07-13
Updated: 2003-02-20
OrgTechHandle: EBAYN-ARIN
OrgTechName: eBay Network
OrgTechPhone: +1-408-376-7400
OrgTechEmail: *******@ebay.com
As you can see, this is the real ebay website.
If you are not 100% sure of a website's authenticity, never enter your details, especially if there is money involved. Identity theft is also a growing concern. You should be very careful before entering your social security number online or other personal information.
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