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How can I tell if a website is impersonating eBay?

If you visit a website and you aren’t sure whether it’s legitimate, these tips can help you decide.

Beware of emails that ask you to go to a website and provide confidential information.
We’ll never ask you to provide confidential information by email.  Any links in our emails are provided for convenience only.
To verify whether an email is really from eBay, click here to go to My eBay. Sign into your account and check your messages.  If the email is from us, a copy of it will appear in the Messages area of My eBay.

Watch out for fake websites that contain the word “eBay” in the URL.
Even if the Web address contains the word "eBay", it might not be an eBay website. Legitimate eBay Web addresses have "ebay.com" immediately before the first forward slash (/). If the address includes additional characters prior to the forward slash, such as @, dashes, or numbers, it’s not an eBay page.
Examples of fake Web addresses:

  • http://signin.ebay.com@10.19.32.4/

  • http://signin-ebay.com/

If you’re signing in with your eBay user ID and password, check that the Web address starts with https://signin.ebay.com/. Look for the “s” in “https,” which indicates that you’re signing into a secure server.

When in doubt, use the eBay website.

  1. Open a new browser window and type www.ebay.com.

  2. Sign in and use the "Site Map" link to navigate the site and find what you need.

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