To anyone who was bidding on my auctions, please read!

[notagamer]

The auction for my turbo duo was to be over tonight. It stood at $313.00! Then I got a question/email from someone asking if my item was the same as another one and they gave me a link. It was an ebay.stores link so I thought it was all cool. I logged in but there was no item. Didn't think much about it.

Then all of a sudden all the bids on the auction were canceled down to $30.00!! I didnt know what was going on! Except the new high bidder at $65 was a 0 feedback bidder, made me wonder. I recieved an email from one of my bidders that said he had recieved an offer from me to sell him the system for $200! Then I got emails from people answering my supposed inquireries about if their item was the same as another and providing a link. I warned them as fast as I could what I thought was happening and then contacted ebay.

About that time they TKOd my account! I was glad except for the fact i couldnt cancel the auction. I finally talked with livesupport who canceled the auction for me. They told me it had been accessed around 3pm and the person sent out a lot of emails through the email forwarding system! So if you were a bidder on any of my auctions and recieved an email from me today, it was not from me!!!

The person approached all my duo bidders and offered the system at $200, they also sent second chance offers to the runners up on my games from last week. If you got one of these offers please do not go for it! All the games were sold and except for one they have been paid for and shipped. The system will be going back on auction so any offers to sell it off of ebay are not from me.

I think all is secure now and am checking all my paypal and bank info. As soon as I am sure I will put the system back up. I am sorry for any problems this caused anyone. I hope no one fell for this guys tricks. By the way thanks to a bidder that he emailed we do know his email addy. it's rspowersell@aim.com any emails from that addy should be ignored, or better yet mailbombed

Thanks for understanding and be careful out there, this spoof is a tricky one. I thought I'd never get caught by one, guess I should never say never!

[nodtveidt]

My advice: Use Firefox 2. It has nice anti-spoof security measures in it. I absent-mindedly followed a link to what I thought was ebay once, and it warned me that the URL was in fact a spoof. Good thing it pretty much slapped me in the face with the warning, or I'd have never seen it nor thought twice about it...but luckily it let me get out before any damage was done.

You were lucky to get away though...I know lots of people who've gotten screwed over by similar spoofs before.

[notagamer]

yeah I guess I did get lucky. Didn't feel like it when I got the email calling me a b**ch though. Thats the worst thing is the people who bid or were watching won't have the trust in me to bid again on the relisted auction. There was a guy in Austria who really wanted it and emailed me for permission to bid (I had said U.S. only) and I was kinda hoping he'd win it just cause it would be cool to know my turbo was there and rather unique in its new surroundings. he was the high bidder when all this happened. Hes the one that tipped me off by sending me the questionable email and he also said as much as he wants it he just doesnt trust this auction anymore. I can't say I blame him.

So has this spoof been around awhile? Seemed rather intricate to me and I consider myself pretty up on all that stuff, never been fooled before.

[SNKNostalgia]

Didn't you contact all these people and explain to them? Also, there is nothing to fear if you changed your password and all is well now. Just as long as you don't do what just happened again, which is next to impossible if any of these bidders had some sense to know that no one is dumb enough to do it twice. Oh well there is plenty of people on E-bay that will want it, so I wouldn't worry.

[Necromancer]

That's a real shitty thing to have happen, but you shouldn't have any problems auctioning the Duo a second time.  Follow Nod's advice - get some anti-spoofing tools and never, never, never follow links to log in pages from e-mails.

[MrFulci]

notagamer.

Do you ahve a firewall and antivirus installed? If not, get those installed.

When it comes to e-mail, don't believe anything about winnign the lottery, having to move funds for someone in exchange for a large cut of the imaginary money, ANY e-mails from companies asking you to give them your password, SSN, etc.

if you do receive an e-mail that seems somewhat legit, such as saying their database was corrupted and they need you to reregister, update your information, etc, DO NOT DO WHATEVER IT READS IN THE E-MAIL TIL YOU CONFIRM IT.  Don't click ont he link in the e-mail, go directly to the site, and contact those in charge if there si not a notice on their site. In over 10 years of having accounts with places, I've only once had my ccount information get lost, and that was at a small company who had a hard drive fail. My information was located there, so everything concernign me was gone, and I had to create a new account. Ebay and such you don't have to be concerned about that.


If you have not done so already, and still have the original e-mail, FORWARD THAT E-MAIL TO: aim's abuse address, try abuse@aim.com. Also, report it to spam@uce.gov, and reportphishing@antiphishing.org


Be careful clicking on links, the link may read one thing, however it's destination may be another.

[nat]

Speaking of eBay scams, I just got an e-mail notification that I won an auction for "Beyond Shadowgate".

Trouble is-- I don't remember bidding on Beyond Shadowgate! Now it's totally possible I did the "bid-high-and-walk" thing when the auction was new and forgot about it. But after reading all this, I feel I need to take a trip over to eBay and see what's crackin'.

[runinruder]

Speaking of eBay scams, I just got an e-mail notification that I won an auction for "Beyond Shadowgate".

Trouble is-- I don't remember bidding on Beyond Shadowgate! Now it's totally possible I did the "bid-high-and-walk" thing when the auction was new and forgot about it. But after reading all this, I feel I need to take a trip over to eBay and see what's crackin'.

Serendipity plus poetic justice!  You deserved to have a rare, expensive ICOM game fall into your lap after a certain other ICOM game screwed up your save files.   

[nat]

Well, I still don't remember bidding on it, but it looks like I won it for $70! Since it's one I have been looking to get a hold of for a number of years I'm going to go ahead and assume that I bid on it last weekend during one of my late-night eBay sweeps and forgot about it.

My US collection is nearing completion... Magical Chase, Super Air Zonk and Dynastic Hero, here I come! Of course, I saved the best, er, most expensive for last.

[runinruder]

Well, I still don't remember bidding on it, but it looks like I won it for $70! Since it's one I have been looking to get a hold of for a number of years I'm going to go ahead and assume that I bid on it last weekend during one of my late-night eBay sweeps and forgot about it.

Congrats, that's a great price for it.  Be sure to post impressions once you play it.  I still need that game and I'm really into the Shadowgate series.  My good buddy GUTS didn't like it and I think Black Tiger isn't a big fan either, but I'm still holding out hope that it'll be cool. 

[notagamer]

ok, I gotta defend myself so you guys know I'm not a dummy. I was hacking back when hackers had integrity, I was a white hat. Things have changed though. I know all about spoof emails, nigerian scams and so on. The thing was this wasnt an email, it came through the ebay messages system. I just have it set so messages are emailed to me. I now know it didnt actually come from that ebay member, his account was compromised and they used it to send me the message. Just as they used mine to email other people. Thats what I mean about it being rather intricate. When someone does click on the link, not only do they get access to the auction they also have a new way to mail thier message to more members.

I wasn't able to email the bidders because when ebay finally did reinstate the auction the bidders list was gone. I was locked out before that so no way to get to it. It's not doing bad though, it's back up to $255 and not over until sunday night. Funny, I don't recognize any of the bidders as being the same from the first auction. Guess there are a lot of people looking for turbos!

By the way, I know a lot of people are looking for the turbo express, When I was searching for my auction last night I noticed there was one on there. It was pretty high priced though.

[Necromancer]

Well, I still don't remember bidding on it, but it looks like I won it for $70! Since it's one I have been looking to get a hold of for a number of years I'm going to go ahead and assume that I bid on it last weekend during one of my late-night eBay sweeps and forgot about it.

That was for a loose disc, wasn't it?  Still, it's a decent price for a pretty good game with many interesting and often funny ways to die.  Let us know how you like it.