So, I'm pretty adept at the internet. I've been doing stuff with it since '94, so I tend to know how things work. But MAN, are scammers getting good.
The Fianceé was using ebay to by a wedding dress, and found one on ebay, that was a very good deal. But at the last minute she was outbid. Then came the email after the auction saying that the winner had bailed and would she like to buy the dress. This set off all sorts of bells and whistles for me, but when I looked over the email it all seemed to be legit, and some poking on ebay's site made it seem like it was feasible.
So then they requested the money via western union, which seemed ok to me, except that them email indicated that I'd be sending the money to ebay, but the actual instructions had me sending it to the specific person. That was a little fishy, but not so fishy I stopped. I don't know how Western Union works, so perhaps I was missing something. But it still felt weird.
So I actually went to a Western Union by me, filled out the paper work, and was saved by the fact that they don't take credit cards (Aside: All western unions places seem shady).
So then I discovered that you can send money online, so away I went, and got to the final confirmation step, and something still felt a little weird. So I went back to the email, which was from ebay@safeharborpayment.com - so I punched in safeharborpayment.com which redirected to an under construction geocites site!!
Holy Schnikes!
So now I started googling, and apparently this is quite the common scam. Crazy. The emails they sent were almost totally legit (clearly they just copied emails that ebay sends). They had a couple little oddites in them, but nothing glaring.
Add into the mix that this was the dream dress, and there was that little bit of pressure to ignore the weirdness and get the great dress at a good price.
So, sorta long story short: Don't Western Union money directly to strangers, no matter how good their html email looks. And don't get all uppity about yourself because you know "a lot about the internet" - almost everybody does nowdays, especially the bad guys.
More info in the ebay forums.
oy.
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