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PayPal Registration Scam - Initial Emails Received on Monday, April 14, 2003

On Monday, April 14, 2003 two email messages were received which claimed to be from an Ebay member with the user-ID of 'danthemanhk'. After reading these emails, it became abundantly clear that they were both identical, except for the email addresses they were sent to (both to this account though - one direct, the other using the 'one4sun@one4sun.net.au' address).

Further reading revealed that the emails were promoting a very serious PayPal registration scam which basically works by having a lot of people go to PayPal's website using a special URL which has a referrer code appended to it, and if someone was to then register from that URL, the person to which the referrer code refers would receive a small credit to their PayPal account.

It's obvious that if a lot of people get those emails (interestingly, the email asks that the recipient forward it to some other selected email addresses), there will be a measurable number of people registering using the supplied, thereby resulting in the PayPal member whose referrer code is being used receiving significant credit into their account.

From a legal standpoint this is quite probably fully-legal, but it is very unethical.

I reported the matter to Ebay by posting a message in the Ebay Australia Round Table discussion forum, and also by sending an email to a special list of members who attended the July 2001 Ebay 'Voice of the Customer' day.

Almost immediately I was emailed by Simon Smith (Ebay Australia's head honcho) to send the emails I'd received to him and several other people, which I did.

Several hours later I received warnings from Ebay's staff that I had violated their Discussion Board policy. I noticed that my original posting to the Round Table had been removed!

I subsequently posted a follow-up message to the Round Table telling people that this had happened (even though it's a clear violation of the discussion board policy), and telling everyone who reads the follow-up message that I will be placing the email message I received online for the entire Internet to see.

So if you haven't done so yet, have a read for yourself and see what you think...

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If there's something you'd like to ask me, or you'd just like to say hello, please send me some email. Note that the email address has been 'poisoned'.


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