By now I think the entire eBay community is familiar with the problem of spoof/phishing emails, and I'm sure that many of you have received one or more of these fraudulent messages over the last year. Spoof emails have become a serious problem for banks and major e-commerce sites, and they are a significant threat to e-commerce globally. They are crafted by fraudsters and appear to come from a trusted source, such as your bank, your ISP, or eBay.

They often contain the correct logos and headers that make them seem legitimate and also have a call to action that encourages people to click a link that takes them to a legitimate-looking website where they enter their personal financial information and passwords.

As the sophistication of these emails has increased, it has become evident that we all need help to extract these fraudulent emails from our systems. Over the last year eBay has rolled out one industry-leading product, the eBay Toolbar with Account Guard, that helps protect members from spoof sites by alerting them whenever they are about to go to a spoof eBay or PayPal site. If you don't have the eBay Toolbar, I strongly urge you to go to the eBay Safety Centre and download it today.

But it's clear that we need to do more. That's why I'm particularly happy to announce that eBay will be rolling out one of our most effective measures to combat spoof – the second phase of My Messages (available in My eBay). With the second phase of My Messages, launching in late June, you can trust that important eBay account-related messages you receive in My Messages will be legitimate.

From a safety perspective, the bottom line is this – If the email affects your eBay account, it's in My Messages. If you get an email that looks like it's from eBay about a problem with your account or requests personal information and it's not in My Messages, it's a fake email. Please forward it to spoof@ebay.co.uk.

The initial phase of My Messages, launched earlier this year, has been a read-only Inbox for members to receive information about buying, selling, and other activities and events on eBay. This second phase of My Messages allows for two-way communication with eBay and with other eBay members. Soon you'll start receiving the following in your My Messages Inbox:

• important account-related messages (e.g. billing invoices, password change notice, other Trust & Safety messages),
• Customer Support responses and
• member-to-member communications

This will ensure you never miss an important message because of spam blockers or a full email inbox. Additionally, you will continue to get a copy of these communications to your registered email address.

I hope you will take some time to become familiar with the upcoming changes to My Messages by reading our Frequently Asked Questions and taking the My Messages tour.

Regards,
Rob Chesnut
Senior Vice President, Trust & Safety