eBay says that 'Phishing' "is sent to you in an attempt to collect sensitive personal or financial information." eMail arrives in your inbox disguised to look like a respected business enterprise: several large banks, as well as eBay, Paypal, and others, have been used in this manner. The intent is always to get information from you that will enable the thieves to access your real account and remove your property. To be 'hooked' this way lends itself to the name - 'phish'.

Shown below is an example using eBay as the 'catalyst'. (eBay does not actually participate in this activity. Like a catalyst in chemistry, they serve simply as an agent (an unwitting one, at that); while you believe yourself to be working with eBay, in fact you are giving your information to some unknown thief.)

Here is a quote from eBay:

"The email you reported was not sent by eBay. We have reported this email to the appropriate authorities.

In the future, be very cautious of any email that asks you to submit information such as your credit card number or your email password. eBay will never ask you for sensitive personal information such as passwords, bank account or credit card numbers, Personal Identification Numbers (PINs), or Social Security Numbers in an email. If you ever need to provide sensitive information to us, please open a new Web browser, type www.ebay.com into your browser address field, and click on the "site map" link, located at the top of the page, to access the eBay page you need.

If you have any doubt about whether an email message is from eBay, please forward it immediately to spoof@ebay.com. Do not respond to it or click any of the links. Do not remove the original subject line or change the email in any way when you forward it to us (eBay). "

Looks real, does it? It's phishy! Forward something like this directly to spoof at ebay without modifying a thing. Let THEM tell you its OK! Simply press 'Forward' to send your phishy eMail, address it as 'spoof@ebay.com' (or 'spoof@paypal.com', or 'spoof@bankname.com', however appropriate), then click on 'Send' to net this phish.