Hi-tech criminals are retraining their sights on eBay by spoofing the auctioneer’s inquiry form, serving to trick sellers into believing they have a genuine customer.

Discovered by SpamStopsHere, the security firm warns eBay members receive a bogus request that appears to be from the site’s ‘Question from eBay member’ memo portal.

Fooled by the multi-coloured eBay logo, account holders typically respond by clicking the ‘Respond Now’ link in the email – unaware their action pops up a fraudulent eBay login page.

Keen to make a sale, the victim then enters their login details, enabling cyber criminals to ‘hijack’ the seller’s account and steal their identity.

SpamStopsHere said unlike indiscriminate en masse phishing scams, so-called ‘spear’ phishing attacks are “extremely targeted and focus on one end user or organisation.”

“We are seeing an evolution in phishing and spear phishing attacks,” said company chief executive Ted Green.

“The sophistication of attacks is constantly increasing. Cyber criminals are relentless in developing new and ingenious methods of monetary and identity theft. End user education is the best defense against spear phishing attacks.”

The advisory adds that a combination of common sense and email best practice applies to reduce chances of attack, such as logging on manually to the eBay homepage and discarding email that asks for sensitive data.

In other phishing scams criminals forge the displayed ‘sender’ of the email, so the firm warns memos seeking personal data appearing to come from co-workers or the department IT manager should be considered bogus.