New Phishing Storm Aimed at PayPal

Today Richard Brewer-Hay, the eBay corporate blogger had a post about PayPal's 10th birthday on eBayInkBlog.

To celebrate the occasion the Phishing crooks & scammers have unleashed a storm of phishing emails.

On July 7th Richard had a post about phishing. I commented at the time,

The simplest, safest and most secure way to put an end to PayPal phishing would be for PayPal to cease putting clickable links in emails. Any customer communication requiring input from customers should be on the secure site.

“You have a message from PayPal which requires response, please log in to your account to access it.”

About three weeks later somebody called Square said,

Henrietta’s suggestion sounds simple enough, but it was already done in the last year and then changed back. I don’t think there was any explanation when it happened or was reversed, I’m guessing that enough sellers, who get tons of these emails and end up click on the transaction link to get more info, complained about the inconvenience. It may be like a safer approach, but it’s also creating an extra step to check on your payments, which is a pain when it multiplies out many times.

I have no knowledge whatsoever of PayPal doing what Square says they did, you would think I might have noticed since last year I was still selling actively on eBay and I accept PayPal on my website, but whatever. Personally I would never, ever, click on a link in an email purported to be from either eBay or PayPal. My advice to you dear reader would be to do the same, send them straight to spoof@paypal.com.

I have received three very high quality and almost believable Phishing communications today. You can see two of them here and here. Links have been disabled!

Giving credit where it is due PayPal responds very fast to reported phishing attempts.

Dear XXX,

Thanks for taking an active role by reporting suspicious-looking emails.
The email you forwarded to us is a phishing email, and our security team
is working to disable it.

Do you have any knowledge of PayPal ending clickable links in email messages last year and then reversing it?

Y'all come back

Obstruction of Justice as eBay Removes Evidence

I really hate to keep banging the drum on this ebusiness_supplies scandal in Australia. The fact of the matter is, not only is PayPal Australia back-pedaling as fast as they can on Buyer Protection

I emailed Paypal and after about 5 emails and a lot of frustration, I got the buyer protection ... Paypal was a disgrace really, they closed the dispute and blew me off initially. Until I wanted it in writing that they would not honour the Protection..only then did they come good.

but eBay is busily removing any trace that the seller existed.

It is fact that eBay did nothing to shut down this seller for weeks despite repeated reporting of policy violations in listings. It is also fact that because of the policy violations many of the listings which carried PayPal Buyer Protection buttons were not eligible for PayPal Buyer Protection. This is deceptive trading any way you look at it.

There is some speculation in Australia that eBay took no action beyond removing active listings in order to run the clock out on time limits for filing a dispute. This would not surprise me at all.

What does surprise me is that eBay would remove evidence in what is now an active criminal fraud investigation. This is obstruction of justice.

eBay and Paypal are NOT serving the best interests of the buyer. Naturally eBay claims they are "simply a venue" but I wonder how long that will serve as an excuse in Australia.

Y'all come back




Links:
Western Australia Today

Red Ink: July 29th 2008
Red Ink: July 28th 2008

Its Saturday, Lets Go Holoholo

Holoholo is a Hawaiian word, it means something along the lines of a fun trip, goofing off. As with so much in the islands it is also a hula, learned by little kids and remembered always. Here is Holoholo Ka'a, from the days when a ride in a car was something special. Listen carefully, there is an english verse towards the end.




Now that we are in the mood, first stop Genuine Seller, Mr 'How to Amazon', Steve Lindhorst, author of Selling On The River, is an ex-eBay employee and an excellent writer. Read a recent post "eBay and New Coke - Lessons Lost", no rant just a succinct analogy.

We've all been in those malls on the edge of town that only have a couple of second rate shoe stores and a lot of closed stores - after a time or two of not finding what you came for, you don't go back right?

Next stop The Brews News who has an excellent post on the fallacies of the PowerSeller discounts written from the viewpoint of a PowerSeller, and someone who walks the walk, daily. Here is a taste:

In our business, we always prioritize orders that are placed through our website and through Amazon because the rewards for shipping timely are greater for us on those venues. We still ship eBay orders timely, just not necessarily the same day or the next day. And that is because even if we ship eBay orders 2 or 3 days after we receive them, our DSR for Shipping Time will never fall below our DSR for Shipping & Handling. We provide very good service to our eBay customers but we provide the BEST customer service to buyers who purchase from us elsewhere.

A quick hop across the pond to international eBay trader Ed at Buildaskill who highlights yet another example from the dirty tricks (or is it just plain incompetency, you decide) department at eBay. Check your invoices!

On to my Twitter friend Randy Smythe, the master of concise and incisive, on his My Blog Utopia! for a very interesting post on traffic sources.

Scott Pooler at Trading Assistant Journal has an informative piece on a nifty free tool.

Finally check this out, full disclosure: There are mature words in this blog, if this bothers you please don't go there!

I hope you enjoyed going holoholo with me,

Y'all come back

K.I.S.S at Bonanzle

Keep It Simple Sweetie at Bonanzle

This is an interesting site, it was launched two months ago, still in beta, but remarkably functional. This is one of the few new sites that is oriented to buyers on the home page. How about that!

Support is speedy, friendly and to the point. At this time Seattle based Bonanzle is fee free. Unlike some other sites, there is an advertising budget but organic traffic is gaining velocity. The goal was to target primarily sellers in July, and then target both buyers and sellers thereafter. I have seen booth numbers triple in the last two weeks. I am pleased to tell you there have been sales.

So What is Bonanzle?

Bonanzle is bright and uncluttered, easy to navigate and it feels friendly. It appears to be a hybrid of Craigslist, Etsy and the very very old eBay (the community feel) but better and it is not auction format, fixed price only. Booths (Bonanzle for store) have a cart!

This is not a cookie cutter out of the box sales site. It is a carefully thought out uniquely designed sales venue into which founder Bill Harding and his team have put a tremendous amount of work over the last year and a half.

You can entertain offers on your items if you wish, or not, as you choose. You can ship or offer local pickup for large items like couches and furniture. It is extremely web 2.0 in that there is a live chat option, you can list multiple means of contact, IM, Skype, e-mail, social network, website, blog, or plain old fashioned phone.

The listing format is great. It is truly simple and intuitive. When you click the Sell button a single screen comes up, just that one screen has all the fields you need. No html, decimal free (list in round numbers) and you can duplicate items if you have wording or layout you want to keep consistent.

Pictures are quick and easy to upload from your computer, there is a built in editor and more importantly your pictures look good on the site.

I found the listing process to be extremely fast to learn, completing my first ten items in about 20 minutes. Once I had the process down I was listing an item a minute. Wheeeeeeee! There is a feedback grabber from eBay and I believe you can also bulk import listings from Excel, eBay and Craigslist.

Each seller can have a Bonanza once a month, a Bonanza is a short term super sale.

For a few hours we will let all visitors know that you are having a sale, that they had better check it out, and that all in all, we think you are pretty great. You choose the time to put your goods up for sale. We direct site traffic to your booth. Magic happens..

Bonanzle welcomes non US sellers, Bill says

We're open to sellers from other countries registering (quite a few already have), but our shipping is only setup to specify rates within the US right now, and all our prices are in dollars, so it is admittedly not ideal for them yet. We're hoping to add more internationalization in the coming months.

Bonanzle for buyers
As a buyer you have complete control of how you search. There is a semi-conventional search box on the home page which allows you to search by keyword and then price or speed. You can search for local items, most recently listed, shop in a Live Booth (where the seller is online) or browse more conventionally by category. In the Booths you can choose from six sort options.

Bonanzle has a unique cart system, the buyer drags items to the sellers cart, checks off options and makes an offer if that option is checked. The seller can fine tune with any shipping discounts etc and respond. Currently the site is set up for Paypal and Google Checkout.

I have tested quite a few sites since February and I now know which ones I do not want anything to do with. My gut feeling on this one? I like it, it is going places. I am in on the ground floor, which is a good place to be.

So here is a special offer, all sellers who get in and stock their booth before the beta period ends will be grandfathered in, and not be charged fees for six months after everyone else starts getting charged.

Tell 'em Henrietta sent you, (full disclosure, I am not getting paid to do this)

Y'all come back