I was browsing eBay when the weirdest thing happened.  I clicked on an item, and the next thing I knew, I was looking at the eBay home page.  Or so I thought...

Something did not seem right about the page.  The most obvious thing was that there appeared to be two buttons where the sign in button was supposed to be.  One button was on top of the other.  This prompted me to look at the address bar and I noticed the URL was wrong.   So, I hit the back button.  It took me back to the item I had clicked on.  After a few seconds, I was sent back to the same mysterious site.

My first thought was that something was installed on my computer to forward me to this site when I viewed auctions on eBay.  I clicked a few other items, and everything seemed fine.  I went back to the original item, and was once again directed to the fake site.  My guess is that someone had figured out a way to use JavaScript or Meta tags to direct people to other sites from this eBay auction.   While browsing eBay, an unsuspecting user that sees the screen I saw may enter their user name and password without thinking.  Had they done so, they would have been sending their eBay account information to someone.

After I realized this page was a fake, I immediately called my wife to show her what was happening and to warn her.  She uses eBay more than I do, so I showed her why she needs to be careful while browsing.  She said I needed to report the auction that had directed me to the page.  I thought that was a good idea.  

I was very unnerved by how many steps it took to report the issue.  You would think that eBay would make it easy to report such scams.  First, I had to hunt the page for a link to contact eBay.  I had to click around a few times to find that link, because I was looking for something obvious.  I finally found a tiny, grayed out link at the bottom of the page.  It took another 7 screens or so before I was able to submit the complaint.  It was ridiculous!  I really think eBay needs to make the process of reporting scams a lot simpler.  The average user would have given up.

While I was working on the report, I went back to the fake site one more time.  Upon a closer look, it was clear the people had taken a screen shot of the eBay home page and positioned text boxes over the image so it would appear to be a working copy of the eBay home page.  They also put a fake button over the button in the screen shot.

I am not going to paste any links to this site or the auction here.  God forbid someone wind up getting scammed out of his or her eBay information because of something I post on my blog.  What I will do is post a screen shot of the page I was directed to.  It might be a little unnerving how real it looks.  The irony is that the screen shot even contains a warning about checking that the URL is correct.  Just let it be reminder that you need to be careful when you are posting information online.

NOTE: Click the link above to see the screen shot.  It will direct you to an external site.  Vox wouldn't let me upload the image for some reason.

This article made me smile.  Apparently some people are really getting into their new Wii games, and their remotes are flying and breaking things as a result.  Sweaty hands and people letting go of the remote are apparently the culprits.  One bowling game that requires you to move your arm like you are bowling is apparently causing problems because people actually let go of the remote as they would a real bowling ball.  Nintendo is apparently "looking into" wrist straps breaking. 

Wrist straps?  I think they should look into wrist straps not being worn.  Seriously, I would have never worn it.  I would have looked at it and thought, "Well, that's gay." (Sorry, that's how I talk.  Not PC, but that's me.)    I'd, of course, be one of those people looking at the hole in my TV saying, "Oh.  So, that's what the strap was for." 

Then again, this could just be an ingenious conspiracy by some men to get that HDTV their wife won't let them buy.  "Gosh honey, I can't believe I did that.  How silly of me.  The rock?  Oh, well, I held that in my hand with the remote to add weight.  I guess we should just go HD since they're so cheap now.  Bummer."

I just signed up for a YouOS account.  YouOS is a web based operating system.  It runs in your browser window and you can install and run applications very similar to a normal OS, except you can log onto it from any browser and access your apps and files.  A pretty cool idea.