Scam? and how?

I just put something up on ebay to sell.. and almost immediately i get an email saying this:

Quote:

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Dear Seller........l have read through and understand the condition of the product.I really have interest in your item.Can i offer you $630.00 USD for this item and i will make instant payment via my PayPal account.Kindly reply with your full name and your PayPal email address of where you want the money to be credited to ,please include your email address in your reply for effective contact....

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I'm wondering.. can this be a scam of some sort? and if it was, how does it work? If i gave her my paypal email account to make payment to and my name, what could she do? Or is this not a scam, and instead some sort of bot that harvests email addresses to spam?

Also she is offering way more money that the price I listed the item at ($300).

am i just being paranoid?

Beware! That is definitely a scam, and a popular one at that.

Typically that is to gain your interest, but they will not ultimately agree to Paypal. They will ask you to either ship the item and they will send you a check/money order (which never arrives) or they will ask you to use another type of online payment system.

You can forward those type of scams to something like [email protected] or something.

Read here as well - http://reviews.ebay.com/7-Warning-Si...00000001881448

'aight. thanks!

Got another email..this time offering $850!
bah.

Just for fun, what is it you are selling?

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Originally Posted by colt45joe

I just put something up on ebay to sell.. and almost immediately i get an email saying this:

Quote:

---

Dear Seller........l have read through and understand the condition of the product.I really have interest in your item.Can i offer you $630.00 USD for this item and i will make instant payment via my PayPal account.Kindly reply with your full name and your PayPal email address of where you want the money to be credited to ,please include your email address in your reply for effective contact....

---

I'm wondering.. can this be a scam of some sort? and if it was, how does it work? If i gave her my paypal email account to make payment to and my name, what could she do? Or is this not a scam, and instead some sort of bot that harvests email addresses to spam?

Also she is offering way more money that the price I listed the item at ($300).

am i just being paranoid?

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The bad english is always a tell.
I get some of these everytime I post an ad on Craigslist.
What they do is they send you a fake certefied check which the bank will accept at first, then they ask you to wire them the change back via western union or something similar, and you end up owing the bank the money when they find out the check was a fake.

These people are easy to spot however, they are from third world countries (mainly Africa) and have bad english skills.

So be careful, especially when an offer is too good to be true...

H.

A few years ago someone stole around $800 on my Visa debit card and my bank said that people can easily try random numbers until they hit one that works, but for email scams I found some videos that seem good

Phishing Scams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqRZG...layer_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzfPU...FRlcagodQw247w

Protect Yourself from eBay Email Scams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyKjm0qwI-w

ebay scam going on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEX_l...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8kDAwrCr94