John Tan is selling a collectable statue on eBay. Peter is the highest bidder, and wins the listing for John’s statue. Shortly after winning the auction, Peter receives this email from someone pretending to be John: “Hi, Peter. Congratulations on winning the statue! Please send me a cashier’s cheque, payable to Billy Lim.” Peter is suspicious, because the email address of the sender doesn’t match John’s eBay-registered email address. So, Peter contacts John at John’s official address. John tells Peter that Billy Lim must be impersonating him, and that Peter should not send Mr Lim any money. Instead, John and Peter work out the correct payment details, using their officially registered email addresses.

Personal information - such as names, addresses, passwords, credit card numbers – are sensitive and valuable. Personal information can also be valuable to individuals trying to defraud eBay members. To try to get this type of information from an eBay member, one of these individuals might send a member an email claiming to be an eBay employee or another eBay member and requesting personal information. These requests might say it is important for members to reply with sensitive information by email, or contain links to Web pages that request members to sign in and submit information.

eBay will never ask a member to send eBay sensitive information through email. If eBay ever does request sensitive information, eBay will always direct its members to the eBay site. With very few exceptions, members can submit the requested information through their “My eBay” page.

If a member receives an email message requesting passwords, credit card numbers or other sensitive information, they should refer to the Email and Web sites Impersonating eBay page for more information as well as instructions that will allow them to report the email. If they have already submitted information as a result of an email message they received, they should review the Securing Your Account and Reporting Account Theft page for additional steps they should take as well as information about how to contact eBay for assistance.

eBay has this policy to help our members protect their personal information and to help members avoid being victimised by unscrupulous individuals.