‘Trade Me’ becomes Target of Phishing E-mail

'Trade Me' is warning consumers that a fake e-mail, while posing as a message from the biggest online-auction site of New Zealand, is circulating online.

The creator of this scam e-mail are reportedly phishers who steal identities, while the policing team of Trade Me has caught the message, says Paul Ford Spokesman of Trade Me. Nbr.co.nz published this on September 26, 2011.

Addressing the recipient as Trade Me member, the scam e-mail tells him that Trade Me lately declared one fresh safety initiative known as 'Trusted Selling with Identity Confirmation,' which will safeguard its subscribers against illegitimate listings. Subsequently, the message directs the users that they should click a given web-link leading onto a site (actually phony) for confirming details. After this, the message signs off from John Canfield, Senior Director of Trade Me Safe and Trust Department. But the person and post both are non-existent, published The National Business Review dated September 26, 2011.

Essentially, the e-mail is fraudulent as its use of the abbreviation "Inc." at the end of Trade Me suggests.

Shedding light on the scam e-mail, Ford stated that it seemed to be derived from one 2008 bogus eBay e-mail that posed as a message from John Canfield, trust and safety director, the name and designation, which the Trade Me scammers of 2011 had appropriated.

'Trade Me,' meanwhile, suggested certain security measures, which consumers could adopt. First, they must remember that the company wouldn't ever request them to provide personal details over e-mail.

Secondly, they must never follow any web-link within an e-mail for accessing a site like in the above discussed instance where nobody should have hit the web-link in the e-mail for reaching the Trade Me site.

Additionally, anybody getting an e-mail, apparently from Trade Me, must forward it to the company at abuse@trademe.co.nz, which can arrange for the shutdown of the phishing website as also stop others from getting victimized with the scam.

Now, a somewhat similar phishing scam hit Trade Me in 2006 as well when consumers got one electronic mail, which conned them into re-confirming personal account details so their accounts wouldn't be suspended.

Related article: “Loopholes did not cause online banking thefts”: ICBC

» SPAMfighter News - 10/4/2011