Do you sell on eBay? Are you familiar with a second chance buy? Recently, a friend of mine had a debacle happen to him on eBay. My friend successfully sold a large ticket item; I am talking in the $6000 range, on eBay to the highest bidder. He received payment and then sent the product on its way. Then a couple of days later he gets an email expressing concern that the winner hadn’t received their product. However, the person emailing him who thinks they bought the product wasn’t even the person who even bought it in the first place.

My friend emailed them and told them that they weren’t the highest bidder and the item has already been bought. The bidder emailed him back and said they received an email from him telling them, “They were the “Second Chance” winners and have won the item”. This, however, was not the case at all, as a matter of fact, the bidder just became a victim of a phishing scam.

Here is what happened in this scam.
1) The scam artist found out who the second highest bidder by analyzing the eBay website
2) They then sent a fake second chance buy email to the second highest bidder
3) They said their PayPal account is down, send payment directly to PO Box
4) Your check is cashed

Don’t fall victim to a second chance phishing scam
Here’s what you need to be aware of while shopping on Internet.
1) Don’t believe email deals that are too good to be true
2) If you click on deal in the email, look for the secure lock on the webpage or in the browser. If the lock isn’t there, it isn’t a real site.
3) Only pay through a secure service
4) Don’t take the payment offline, pay with a credit card or PayPal, not cash/check