Confessions Of An eBay Scammer

from the yet-another-one dept

MSNBC loves to write about scams. So, following one of their "confessions of an eBay scammer" type stories, another eBay scammer wrote them to tell them how pitiful their chosen scammer was. Instead, he suggested they write about his method of scamming eBay members out of their money. The article shows that it's a fairly simple process of combining a few different scams in one (phishing for personal info, taking auctions off eBay and using a fake escrow site). The more interesting point is that most of these scams rely on building up the trust of the buyer. A lot of it is clearly done by social engineering - to the point that many of the victims seem apologetic when they begin to realize they've been scammed. At the same time, the social engineering seems to work in reverse to, as the scammer claims (yeah, right) that he feels a bit guilty about stealing money from these people - and sometimes continues to talk to them after the scam is revealed, trying to justify his actions with made up sob stories about why he needs the money.

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