You’re probably already familiar with the old phishing scams where someone has passed away/fled a third world country/discovered some long-forgotten funds and needs your “help” to wire the money. For just a small “administrative” fee, the person will share the $15 million amount with you.
Though this online fraud has been exposed some time ago, people are still falling for it.
The latest scam has an interesting twist.
Here’s an email I received:
Dear User,
We recently noticed that a transaction may have been made without your
knowledge or consent. We are currently investigating the following
transaction:
-----------------------------------
Details of Disputed Transaction
-----------------------------------
Seller's name: Hagio-Host
Seller's email: yawvaar@gmail.com
Seller's transaction ID: 7YW39066PT6017814
Transaction date: Nov 25, 2008
Transaction amount: -$80.94 USD
Your transaction ID: 30L88064FF065545B
Case number: PP-587-442-704
To see the details of this case, log in to your PayPal account by following the link below and go to
the Resolution Center.
https://www.paypal[dot]com/login?secure=ssl32?caseid=7YW39066PT6017814?=disputeTRANSACTION
The seller has been asked to provide information about this transaction.
During this time the funds are not available in your account, but if the
unauthorized activity claim is decided in your favor, we will fully refund
you for the amount of the transaction.
Sincerely,
Account Review Department
Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you
will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account
and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.
BC:PP-587-442-704:R1:USD80.94:11/25/2008:30L88064FF065545B
—
This looks pretty legitimate, however, checking on the hyperlinked address to “fix” this problem, it goes to “http://paypal.update-user-info[dot]com/index.htm”
Which is obviously intended to harvest your paypal login and password.
They probably won’t catch too many people with this trick, but still it pays to be careful.
Always check the originating domain and you’re unsure, go to the Paypal website and drop them an email.
eBay’s electronic payment division PayPal is responsible for the bulk of eBay auction payments, and a new beta version is in the process of being launched. Against this backdrop is a groundswell of disgruntled Internet Marketers. Is it too little, too late?
PayPal (part of eBay’s Payments division) is one of the key pieces of the auction giants empire, powering it’s payment capability. It’s in the process of launching a revamp:
Although these are somewhat pleasant features to have, they’ll have to contend with a group of disgruntled Internet Marketers, particularly users of Jonathan Leger’s $7 script, which administers a mini affiliate marketing scheme through PayPal’s APIs.
Read through this thread at Jon Leger’s 7Dollar Forum and you’ll get the distinct impression that PayPal’s frontline customer service seems ill equipped to deal with the issues that (more…)
Forget your preconceptions that online auction behemoth eBay is a place to sell quirky Pez dispensers and broken printers, I did a survey of the market potential of the site for Internet Marketers and you’d be pretty pleasantly surprised by my findings.
Rather than recycle subjective opinions from blogs and forums, I went to Nasdaq.com and pulled eBay’s financial stats.
San Jose-based eBay has certainly come a long way from its beginnings as a sole proprietorship in 1995.
In case you think it’s only holds sway as the dominant player in the auction space, think again. The addition of electronic payment provider PayPal and Internet telephony VOIP (voice over internet protocol) provider Skype, means that it is a force to be reckoned with in the e-payment and communications arena too.
The financials show that the 30% year-on-year growth to sales of $5.96 billion in sales last years and a $1.125 billion net profit, mean that it’s position as a digital exchange for products and services is pretty much cemented.
Especially when you look back and see two major initiatives in 2004:
- The $153 million purchase of Germany’s Mobile.de, the biggest auto classifieds Web site, which brought eBayers a choice of 800,000 used vehicles
- New York States choice to auction surplus items on eBay, rather than conduct its own auctions.
These and more recent intiatives have helped build up eBay’s standing.
In a recent IDC (International Data Corp) report “The State of the Consumer Digital Marketplace (Mar 2007)”, the “most important Internet companies” were analyzed, and the listing included:
- Amazon.com Inc
- eBay Inc
- Google Inc
- Time Warner Inc.’s AOL
- Yahoo! Inc
- Microsoft Inc.’s Online Services Business (OSB), the former MSN
- News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media (MySpace)
What turned the tide for me was hearing from eBay specialist Adam Ginsburg during Matt Bacak’s Marketing Madness in Atlanta.
Adam’s sold $20 million (more…)
As an Internet marketer, you will inevitably collect payments and PayPal is one of the better payment providers.
PayPal is:
- fairly simple to use
- reliable
- transaction fees are fairly acceptable for low transaction volumes.
Having established itself as a primary mode of payment for eBay auctions, it’s been an easy to transition to becoming a mainstream payment option.
I’d say that the PayPal it’s a reliable way of doing business in your sales volumes $5,000 a month or lower. However, once you are doing sales of at least $10,000 a month you’d want to get your own payment gateway. (more…)
