Some scammers were phishing for a sucker. They almost reeled me in.
I got an e-mail that said I was in danger of losing my eBay account.
Hey, it had the eBay logo on it, it must be OK, right?
I vaguely remembered looking at eBay awhile back. I couldn't remember if I'd used it.
I don't need more stuff. I've got an attic brimming with junk, and a basement awash in artifacts. And I doubt even online that I would find a buyer for the worn-out or obsolete stuff I've collected.
But I panicked. I didn't want to be left out of the New Digital Order. People would sneer at me, "He doesn't have an eBay account!" Children would giggle; dogs would snarl.
So I tried to log in to the site linked to the e-mail. It didn't see to work so well, so I forgot about it for a while.
Then, a day or two later, I spotted a tiny news item. It warned of a variant of the online scam called phishing. Don't give your account passwords to anyone, the article said.
Even to online messages that seem to be from a legitimate company. Such as eBay.
I frantically e-mailed eBay. Yep, their reply e-mail said, I'd been the target of a scam.
I had visions of scam artists ordering a big-screen TV and charging it to me.
I tried to access my personal account. No luck. I had visions of a scamster buying a Picasso.
I contacted eBay. They were quite helpful. It turns out that I had apparently never finished registering with eBay in the first place. So then I had to officially open my account, just to find out whether it had been used.
As I did so, I was sure I'd finally open it to find a bid on a painting by Picasso.
I was in luck, however. There were no bids out on it -- not for a Lexus, not for a Picasso, not even for an old lampshade or souvenir of the Grand Canyon.
As an editor, I've read plenty of articles warning people about online scams. But I bit anyway. So I have resolved to be more careful with my online stuff.
Gotta go. A very helpful guy in Nigeria has put the Brooklyn Bridge up for sale online, and I want to see if my bid was a winner.
I could, at least, store all my old stuff on it.
