Paul Tomblin wrote:

Unless you stupidly follow links in the seller-supplied section of the
listing, or suggestions to email the seller.

At one time I was looking for a Garmin 296, and just for the hell of it I
looked for listings of Garmin 530s. 7 out of 10 of them were scammers -
they would tell you that they had 5 of them for sale, and to email them to
get their "special buy it now price". The point there would be to get you
to buy the item off eBay, and so not have any of the (feeble) protections
that eBay offers. You can bet that after you paid they wouldn't deliver.

And one of the ones who didn't want you to email them had a link in his
seller-supplied section that said "click here to see my eBay store", which
took you to a site that wasn't ebay, but which used all the eBay graphics
to look like it was legit, and told you to log in with your eBay account
to see the store. You can bet that anybody stupid enough to do that would
soon find their eBay account being used to sell "5 Garmin 530s".

For about a month there, while I was looking for my Garmin 296, I was
reporting about 3 eBay scammers a day to eBay. The sales would be taken
down, and then re-appear the next day under a new account. One
interesting thing - unlike the real Garmin 530s, which were listed in the
Avionics category, the scammers would list under utterly bizarre
categories, like "Women's shoes".

Making and off eBay purchase from a eBay seller isn't going to get your
account hacked.

All of what you're saying is covered under eBay's security
recommendations that few people read. Needless to say you have to be
pretty stupid or ignorant to fall for these scams. Also buying an
expensive item like the Garmin GPS or a laptop computer from a 0
feedback seller is just plain stupid and I have a hard time feeling
sorry for people that have fallen for this.

A good portion of my income comes from selling my products on eBay and
I've never had a scam eMail come close to fooling me or anyone hack my
account.

Tony