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UK
The newsletter for buyers and bidders on
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This latest issue is now also available online at
http://www.workwinners.com/newsletter/040811.htm
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In This Issue
1. News and Views
2. Feedback from last Newsletter
3. Email spoofs - Special Report
4. Something to help your business
5. Just when you think you're the only one ....
6. Someone's auctioning what? Unusual items currently
available
7. Finally
8. My Products Catalogue
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Inspirational quote of the day
"Never be afraid to do something new. Remember,
amateurs built
the ark; professionals built the Titanic."
Unknown Author
=============================
Brian McGregor speaking - you receive the
Newsletter because you have bought from me or enquired about
my
auction items on eBay or QXL.
If you do not want to receive this newsletter, the only one
dedicated to eBay
email to unsubscribe@workwinners.com
=============================
1. News and Views
a) So you think you've gone as far as you can selling on eBay?
There is a site in
eBayers world-wide measured by feedback rating.
And the winner is, with a feedback rating of 181,680 ...
Take a look yourself:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr801.htm
b) PayPal for your website
One of the questions I get asked from time to time is how to
accept credit card payments on websites.
Once they've sold via eBay, it seems many people then want
to
progress to setting up their own website and try to market
over
the internet. In order to do this successfully, it's pretty
important that you let your buyers have the option of paying
by
credit card.
Most of us eBayers are aware of PayPal, and know that to
send and
receive money you need to have a PayPal account.
Now, PayPal has announced a new scheme which lets you take
credit
card payments on a website, without the buyer needing to
have a
PayPal account.
This is great news for the part-time internet business
owner. You
can read about it here:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr815.htm
c) PowerSeller qualification
The accolade some eBay members seek is to become a
PowerSeller.
If you're interested in attaining the certificate, these are
the
qualification criteria:
You need at least 100 feedbacks with 98%+ positive feedback
rating
You need to average at least 4 listings over each of the
previous
3 months
You need to average £750 of sales over each of the previous
3
months
That's all there is to it.
The benefits of being a PowerSeller? You can find out here:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr803.htm
d) You can do it.
Based on a survey it conducted among its users, eBay
estimates
that more than 430,000 people now generate a significant
proportion of their household income selling goods through
the
site. eBay at any one time now lists about 29 million items
world-wide.
There definitely is room for you and I to make money here.
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2. Feedback from last Newsletter
Wow. What can I say?
In the last edition of the newsletter I did a special
feature on
auction fraud. I didn't realise what a hornet's nest I'd
stirred
up.
It seems that fraud on eBay and PayPal is a concern of many
people. In addition, you also question eBay's capabilities
and
willingness to help.
I'd like to show you a couple of the many emails I received
on
the topic after the newsletter went out.
***
Dear Brian
Someone hijacked my account last week and tried to sell some
mobile phones on my account. I contacted ebay about this and
they
have now suspended my account. They told me this would take
72
hours, and 48 hours after the 72 hours I still have not
heard
anything from ebay. I have forwarded them my telephone
numbers
and am now at my wits end. I have built up my ebay account
over
the past year or so and have over 100 good feedbacks. I have
a
list of things waiting to go on ebay but can do
nothing. Have
you any suggestions as to what I can do because I have not
got a
clue. I have spent a lot of money with ebay and I do not
think it
is fair the way I have been treated. I have never given my
password to anyone so obviously there is a loophole in the
system
that allows hijacking. If you can help me or would like more
information or would like to talk to me you can ring me. I
am
sending this to you because from your newsletters it seems
that
you know a lot about ebay so I am sure that you will be able
to
help me in some way
Thank you
G
***
***
Hi Brian.
I'm an avid reader of your newsletter and thought I would
highlight a new form of fraud I experienced several times a
couple of weeks ago.
It started when I bid on a Sony Plasma TV but wasn't
prepared to
bid high enough to win the item.
A couple of weeks after the auction finished, I received an
email
apparently from the seller offering me a "second
chance" to win
the item and was I still interested?
I innocently wrote back indicating that I was still
interested
and made a revised offer for the TV. Things appeared to be going
well as the seller accepted my offer. However, at the same time
they asked for my home address so they could set up an e-bay
transaction.
At this point I became suspicious as I know enough to know
that
ebay provides this for genuine sellers and didn't send them
the
information. I then used ebay to contact the seller and
quickly
discovered they knew nothing about the second chance.
This attempt to get my address occurred THREE times from
three
different "sellers" in the course of just one
week.
The only value I can see in this scam is the address itself.
The
value? I can only image is to wait until I leave the house
one
day and then burgle as I obviously have high value
equipment.........
You may like to warn other users.
On the same subject, whilst a more obvious fraud, it
occurred to
me that if that's the information you're looking for, then
you
could always set up a dummy high value item and wait until
someone bids its value up and the ebay will happily provide
an
address and the worst that can happen to the seller is they
get
negative feedback.
The winner on the other hand may be burgled.
I
***
***
Dear Brian
As usual a most interesting newsletter.
Sorry about the difficulty in the painting business, but as
far
as I am concerned, I don't mind you sticking to the
keyboard.
Just two small points if you can spare some time.
First one I know is the same thing I am moaning about for
the
last two years. Is
there a way you might start a survey of any
kind to see if more people are fed up with the fraudulent
listing
of Location; i.e.
-
fees. it is prohibitive for smaller articles to be bought
outside
the
from the States.
Understandably if I wish to see the listings from everywhere
I
can easily request e-bay to show them to me, but when I
request
only items from
Eastern and Australian ones.
I've mentioned it to e-bay several times but no answer or
reaction.
Second is the security aspect. Can you be more specific how
someone can highjack your account and use it.
Just that I am a little paranoid lately as my yahoo mail
address
has been misused for spamming, and I obviously got the heat.
Thanks for your efforts and time.
Regards
H
***
I have also had correspondence with a number of eBayers who
we've
managed to help avoid being defrauded of around £2,500 in
total
from bogus sellers.
Finally, on correspondence from readers, I have to put the
record
straight. In my article on fraud, I mentioned
times by way of example, and upset this reader:
***
Dear Brian,
Well, let's start with something nice and sweet :-).
I just love your newsletters and found them extremely useful
for
my Ebay activity. Although, the last one contains a few
mentions
of my homeland,
you know what I mean, and I don't assume you bound the name
of
Rather you needed an example and it sounded like a good one.
But I feel that for some of us, who have never been to
and never met the lovely open hearted well-educated and
extremely
generous ukrainian people in person,
capital of the online crime empire. Oh no, I don't ask you
to
take your words back, neither to use another country's name
in
the future :).
Actually, the only purpose of the email is to let you know
what
I'm feeling, because after all this time we spent together
on the
newsletters, I think of you like of a good friend with whom
I may
share my thoughts.
Thank you for your time, and for your great newsletters.
Kind regards,
Z
ukrainian girl
P.S.: I do apologize for any imperfections in my English and
I
can assure you that, despite their possible presence in the
email, this is not a fraudulent one. ;-)
***
For my part, I have thanked Z for getting in touch,
aplogised for
my laziness, and also commended her on her English.
The point of telling you about other emails I've received is
that
information on frauds or attempted frauds can be valuable to
fellow eBayers. If you've experienced this, and are happy
that
this can be described anonymously via the newsletter please
let
me know.
Finally, a word from our leader. In a recent interview Meg
Whitman, eBay's CEO was asked "How significant is fraud
as a
threat to your users and to the company?"
Ms. Whitman replied, "Fraud is a tiny percentage of the
number of
listings on the site or the gross merchandise volume. I
think we
wouldn't be as big and the marketplace wouldn't be as
successful
if that were not the case. That said, we want that number to
be
as close to zero as possible and we work hard at it."
Amen to that!
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3. Email spoofs - Special Report
Having talked about fraud, the next danger of trading I'd
like to
cover is spoof emails. This also know as phishing in the
spoof
email trade. This is becoming the accepted generic term for
spoof
emails and websites. Amazingly, phishing doesn't appear on
eBay.co.uk Help search.
First, what is Phishing?
Phishing attacks use spoof e-mails (and fraudulent websites)
designed to fool recipients into divulging personal
financial
data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and
passwords
etc.
The phishers achieve this by making their spoof email look
like
its coming from trusted brands, like eBay and PayPal. They
also
usually convey a sense of urgency in the message. They count
on
people feeling somewhat of a panic when they get the message
and
hope that they reply right away before they have time to
think.
Messages might include a line like "Your account will
be shut
down if you don't immediately verify your account
information,
click on the link below." Other messages suggest that
it is
suspected your account has been accessed by fraudsters, and
you
need to log in now to have this checked out.
By hijacking the trusted names of well known online
companies,
banks, retailers and credit card companies, it appears that
phishers are able to convince up to 5% of recipients to
respond
to them.
Research firm Gartner released a survey estimating that 57
million adults in the
month of May, and that nearly 11 million of those adults had
clicked on a bogus phishing link. Of these, it was estimated
that
1.8 million had given out personal information.
Here are some examples of recent phishing email attacks,
some of
which you may have received yourself:
The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) is an industry
coalition
working to eliminate the problem of phishing and email
spoofing
attacks. They record and share information about the
problem, and
promote the visibility and adoption of industry solutions.
The latest quarterly report from APWG includes the following
information:
Unique phishing attacks by targeted companies in the month
of May
04:
370 Citibank
293 eBay
167
149 PayPal
33 Fleet Bank
21 VISA
17 AOL
17 Lloyds
15 Barclays
12 Westpac
10 Nationwide
9
7 Natwest
6 Bank One
6 Chase
6 Earthlink
4 ANZ
3 e-gold
3 HSBC
3 MSN
3 Woolwich
3 Yahoo
You can read this quarterly report yourself. It's only 5
pages
long, but it certainly gives a snapshot of the size of the
problem.
You can download it from here:
www.workwinners.com/nlr804.htm
And here is the APWG website:
Some advice on how to avoid phishing scams
a) Be suspicious of any email with urgent requests for
personal
financial information
b) Be suspicious of any email containing statements designed
to
invoke urgent action asking for usernames, passwords, credit
card
numbers, social security numbers, etc.
c) Phisher emails are typically NOT personalised, while
valid
messages from your bank or e-commerce company will be.
d) Don't use the links contained in a suspected email to get
to
any web page. Instead, type in the site's web address in
your
browser, and navigate from there.
e) Avoid filling out forms in email messages that ask for
personal financial information.
f) Always ensure that you're using a secure website when
submitting credit card or other sensitive information via
your
Web browser. To make
sure you're on a secure Web server, check
the beginning of the Web address in your browsers address
bar -
it should be "https://" rather than just
"http://". Also, the
yellow padlock icon should appear in the browser's status
bar.
g) Consider installing a Web browser tool bar to help
protect you
from known phishing fraud websites. eBay has a Toolbar with
Account Guard. This warns you when you're on a potentially
fraudulent (spoof) Web site. It also lets you report such
sites
to eBay. If eBay verifies that a Web site is fraudulent, the
information will automatically be distributed to all other
eBay
Toolbar members, warning them about the spoof Web site. You
can
read about eBay Toolbar here:
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/ebay_toolbar/
h) Regularly log into your online accounts don't leave it
for as
long as a month before you check each account
i) Regularly check your bank, credit and debit card
statements to
ensure that all transactions are legitimate if anything is
suspicious, contact your bank and all card issuers
j) Ensure that your browser is up to date and security
patches
applied, in particular go to the Microsoft Security home
page to
determine which software patches you need for your system.
http://www.microsoft.com/security/
k) Report phishing or spoof e-mails to the following groups:
Forward the email to reportphishing@antiphishing.com
Forward the whole email to the "abuse" email
address at the
company that is being spoofed (e.g. spoof@ebay.co.uk)
eBay has a very good tutorial on detecting spoof emails
which you
can find here:
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/education/spooftutorial/index.html
It's just a pity that all departments in eBay haven't read
the
spoof tutorial. One of the statements eBay consistently make
is
that they will never send an email requiring members to
click a
link within the email to enter their member details. And yet
they
have recently sent out two such emails relating to free auction
days, where members are asked to press a link and then key
in
their member details. This is exactly the technique used by
fraudsters in attempting to illegally extract membership
details!
eBay have apologised for this, and have ensure that
education is
being put in place to ensure it doesn't arise again.
Safe trading!
=============================
4. Something to help your business
I often get requests for products which can be sold on eBay.
Here
are four digital items which you can resell on eBay and via
the
internet.
"The Embarrassingly Simple Way I Grabbed the #1
Position on
Google, Yahoo & AOL" Mark Idzik wasn't looking to
get to number
one position on search engines, but he made almost by
accident.
By following Mark's technique step-by-step in his ebook, you
too
can hit the number one spot. More info:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr805.htm
"How to Create Killer Mini Sites that Sell Like
Crazy" Mini Sites
are the latest discovery whereby you sell products into
highly
profitable niche markets. With Alpha del Bosque's ebook, you
will
be able to easily create mini sites, which can produce instant
results and have very large response rates. More info:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr806.htm
"Millionaire Marketing - Deadly Marketing Mistakes
Exposed" This
where you get the benefit of three of the biggest internet
marketers in one go. Millionaire Marketing is an ebook of
the
transcript of a $3,000 two hour symposium given by Marlon
Sanders, Jonathan Mizel and Declan Dunn. If you want to
know
their internet marketing trade secrets, this is for you.
More
info:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr807.htm
"Vend-O-Matic! Automatically Build Profit Generating
Web Sales
Pages" This is a remarkable product from Bill Myers
which enables
you to build sales pages and thankyou pages for any products
you
would like to sell. You don't need to know any HTML, it's
all
produced automatically. More info:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr808.htm
With each of these items, not only do you get the product
itself,
you also get a website page, thankyou page and instructions
on
how to implement your sales page. In fact, everything is
supplied
to start re-selling immediately. In addition, you have
Master
Resale Rights which you confer on your customers enabling
them to
resell the item too.
=============================
5. Just when you think you're the only one ....
I saw this headline in a paper recently "Newly
published book on
I was taken aback. I thought my own ebook 'The eBay Formula'
was
the only one which concentrated on
I'm happy to admit it. David Belbin has just launched 'The
eBay
Book', published by Harriman House.
The reason I'm bringing this to your attention is that I
know
quite a lot of people prefer to have a real book in their
hand as
opposed to an ebook. They feel it's much easier to read from
the
printed page rather than a PC screen.
In 'The eBay Book', long time eBay user David Belbin,
explains
how eBay.co.uk works and how to get the most out of it,
whether
you are a buyer or seller. Step-by-step, he takes you
through the
key features of the site, advises on bidding and selling
tactics,
explains how to minimise the fees you pay and why feedback
is so
important. He explores the best ways to pay for goods, and
what
to do if your transactions go wrong. This hugely readable
book
also contains a wealth of case studies covering a wide
variety of
eBay users.
For newcomers, this is an indispensable primer which will
give
you the confidence to join the vast community of eBayers.
For
people who already know the basics, it is a short-cut to
eBay's
advanced features, and a rapid way to learn the tips and
tricks
that David has picked up over the last five years.
Currently you can get it at Amazon for only £6.99 (published
price £9.99). Here's the link to read about the book:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr809.htm
=============================
6. Someone's auctioning what? Unusual items currently
available
Nothing surprises me when it comes to internet auctions.
Amuse
yourself with some of these beauties ...
And I thought this was an abacus!
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr810.htm
Want a breath of fresh air?
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr811.htm
Any candidates for this in your household?
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr812.htm
Now then, help me with this. Is this real?
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr813.htm
So you think you could be a film star?
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr814.htm
Disclaimer - I have no association with any of the sellers
of the
above items.
=============================
7. Finally
If you are changing email addresses soon please put a note
on
your calendar to send a blank email to:
newsletter@workwinners.com
after you get your new email address.
I don't want to lose touch with you!
If a friend sent you this newsletter, you need to send a
blank
email to:
newsletter@workwinners.com
That way you can get your own copy next time!
Increasingly, email filters are preventing genuine email
communications such as this newsletter from reaching
subscribers.
If you use any method of checking on your email, and you
wish to
continue receiving the newsletter you may need to include my
email address in your safe list, whitelist or address book.
Thank you for continuing to take my newsletter - I hope it
gives
you as much enjoyment to read, as it does me to write.
Regards
Brian McGregor
Editor - "
====================================
8. My Products Catalogue
All the following are original products, services and
opportunities written and created by myself.
"The eBay Formula"
How to sell successfully on
time.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd01.htm
"
Twenty Six genuine
http://www.workwinners.com/rd02.htm
"Sourcing DVDs, CDs and Videos at Trade Prices"
Where and how to buy DVDs, CDs and Videos at trade prices,
and
how to sell for profit.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd03.htm
"Sourcing and Selling Electrical Products for Big
Profits"
Where and how to buy Widescreen TVs, DVD players and VCR
players
at trade prices, and how to sell for profit.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd04.htm
"Sourcing Maternity Clothing and Baby Needs at Trade
Prices"
Where and how to buy at trade prices.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd05.htm
"Sourcing and Selling Jewellery for Big Profits"
Where and how to buy jewellery at trade prices, and how to
sell
for profit.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd06.htm
"Sourcing Mobile Phone Accessories at Trade
Prices"
Where and how to buy mobile phone accessories at trade
prices,
and how to sell for profit.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd07.htm
"The Streetwise Buyer's Guide to Radar Detectors"
Don't buy a Radar Detector system until you read this.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd08.htm
Oil Painting Marketing Business
Become my partner in this pleasant money-making venture.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd09.htm
Your Own ebook and Software Sales Business
Valuable products you can sell on eBay, plus through your
own website which you receive with this package.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd11.htm
See the whole catalogue here:
=============================
"
weekly.
In each issue you'll get ideas on how to make the most of
buying
and selling on eBay sites from a
If you would like to unsubscribe please use the link at the
bottom of this email.
Finally, be assured that your email address will never be
shared
or sold - ever!
=============================
Copyright Information
Copyright © 2006 Brian McGregor. All rights reserved.
No part of this newsletter may be copied or published
without
prior permission, but do please forward it to your friends
and
colleagues as long as you keep it in its entirety. Brian
McGregor, as publisher, disclaims any liability for the use
of
any information contained herein. We further claim no
responsibility for the legality or accuracy of any
advertisements
or articles. It is the reader's responsibility to practice
due
diligence in any product or service acquired based on
information
contained in this newsletter.
To unsubscribe, send a blank email to
unsubscribe@workwinners.com
=============================
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