Scam alert: watch out for this fake eBay transaction email

People who received a convincing fake eBay 'purchase confirmation' email have taken to social media to warn about this sneaky new scam. 

Users of eBay will be accustomed to seeing a ‘thank you for shopping at eBay' email after making a purchase on the platform. Alarm bells will probably ring if you receive a similar email when you haven’t bought anything, especially when the purchase is for as much as a thousand pounds.

Below, we look at this new scam email impersonating eBay and explain how you can spot and avoid it. 

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Fake eBay purchase scam

Which? has seen various examples of this scam. In all emails, it claims you have bought high-value items such as an Apple MacBook or an iPhone. The email also includes a non-existent postal address for delivery, as well as the order date.

In the example shown above, the email is sent from a random Gmail address and claims to be a ‘purchase confirmation’ email. It tells you that you’ve ordered an expensive item costing hundreds, or even thousands, of pounds.

The email includes a number to call for ‘assistance’ and to ‘report any unauthorised activity immediately to a fraud prevention team'. Calling this number will likely put you through to a scammer who will try to get you to reveal as much of your personal and financial information as possible. 

If you receive this email, you should disregard it and log in to your eBay account instead to confirm whether any purchase has been made.

Which? shared the scam email with eBay. It said, 'We are aware of a scam in which members of the public have been emailed about high-value items they have supposedly purchased on eBay.

'Anyone contacted in this way should report the email as spam and delete it. If users are concerned that a message they have received from eBay may not be genuine, they can check the "My Messages" section of their eBay account, as genuine messages will also be in there.

'Trusted sources such as Action Fraud or the National Cyber Security Centre can also provide advice and information on scams.'

Spotting and reporting scam emails

If you receive an email that you’re not sure about, you should trust your instinct and avoid clicking links or responding to the email. Instead:

1. Check the sender's email address. If it’s unrecognisable or not the official email of the brand it claims to be from, it’s probably a scam. To find out if there’s a fraudster behind what appears to be a genuine email address, hover your cursor over or right-click on the sender's name, and you’ll see the email address behind it. On a mobile, you can long-press on the email to inspect it. 
2. Hover over the links at the bottom, for example, links to the ‘contact us’ and ‘terms and conditions’ pages, to get an understanding of where the links really lead. Don't click on them in case the link contains malware.
3. Check for impersonal greetings, blurry or out-of-date branding,  poor spelling, grammar and overall presentation.
4. See if the email is asking for personal or financial details.
5. Notice if the language in the message is trying too hard to be official or if it is trying to rush you to take action.
6. Finally, check with the company the email claims to be from to confirm whether the message is legitimate or not. Always use contact details taken from the most recent official communications you have received from it, or its official website. 

You can report email scams by forwarding the email to report@phishing.gov.uk.

If you lose any money to a scam, call your bank immediately using the number on the back of your bank card and report it to Action Fraud, or call the police on 101 if you’re in Scotland.