February 25, 2008

Protecting Your Self from Auction Scams

If you are selling or buying on Ebay or other auction sites, it is important to protect you or your business from auction scams. Here are some tips on some of the most prevalent auction scams.

There are many auction scams that people try to use in order to scam you or your business out of money. If you are a member of an auction site or a payment processor such as Paypal, beware of spoof emails. Spoof emails are emails are emails that look identical to emails sent by Ebay and Paypal and that ask you for financial or personal information. A rule of thumb is to never click on any links in an email and never give out any personal or financial information to an email. If you think the email is legit, visit the site to see if there is a message for you or contact the site directly.

If you are trying to buy an item on Ebay and the item is sold out, sometimes people try to scam you by contacting you and offering you the option of purchasing the exact item. The catch is that they won't put up an auction for the item and won't take Paypal. They ask you to directly send the money via Western Union. Don't fall for this scam. There is no way to protect your money via Western Union. If you would like to bid on an item, ask them to post an auction for it and only accept to pay with a money order, cashiers check or Paypal. So follow the above tips to protect yourself from auction scams.