Spam question

[johnsemlak]

Just got an email in my bulk mailbox for yahoo. I haven't opened it but the sender&subject line read 'eBay Inc eBay: Urgent Security Notice

I am assuming that this couln't possibly be an email actually from ebay, and it's spam.

One question, is actually opening such emails dangerous in any way?

 

[Turanil]

Rather than spam, I think it could be a sort of Trojan Horse scam. That is, they pretend to be ebay, and you MUST IMMEDIATELY connect (with password and credit card numbers of course), or something horrible will happen to you if you don't. This happened once to a friend, who ended up losing 3000$ to the thief/scammer... So beware! On the other hand, just reading the email should just waste your time, no more.

 

[IronWolf]

Yep, that's a scam. eBay doesn't send out emails asking for account information. It is best just to delete any messages such as these and not fall prey to their phishing tactics.

 

[Darkness]

I think it could be a sort of Trojan Horse scam. That is, they pretend to be ebay, and you MUST IMMEDIATELY connect (with password and credit card numbers of course), or something horrible will happen to you if you don't.

Right, that's usually the case.

Merely opening it probably isn't dangerous, but I'd err on the side of caution and delete it unread. YMMV.

 

[Bront]

If I dug around, I could find the government e-mail address that you can send illegal scams to and they will work to shut them down.

Yeah, One of my e-mail addresses used to regularly get a request from different banks (All of which I didn't bank at), to have me update information, and gave me phoney links.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

There's usually an email address to places like ebay and the like where you can send phony letters to.

spoof@ebay.com

I've had to send a few their way but most of what I've had to send was to Paypal.

spoof@paypal.com

 

[der_kluge]

These types of emails are called Phishing. Often they lead you to a site that looks EXACTLY like the site they are trying to spoof in order to get you to enter in financial information. PayPal and eBay are two of the more popular phishing sites to spoof.

And no, just opening an email and reading the contents therein is not dangerous in and of itself. Opening any enclosure, or going to any web page listed in the email can be hazardous, however.

 

[Psionicist]

And no, just opening an email and reading the contents therein is not dangerous in and of itself. Opening any enclosure, or going to any web page listed in the email can be hazardous, however.

There are a bunch of (old) security holes in Outlook Express that will execute attachments just by viewing the email. So this is only true for web based email services.

 

[Goblyn]

Y'know, when I read the thread title I actually thought you had a question about the canned meat, such as: What is in that stuff, anyway?

As it is, though, I concur with others here. You might as well ignore it to save time and money.