Here's a new phishing scam to watch out for - new to me anyway.  I had not seen this one before.

I had placed a bid on an expensive Gibson guitar, which ended up selling for over twice what I had bid for it.  A few days later I received an e-mail "second chance offer" directing me to contact the seller directly through a hotmail account.  Supposedly, I was being offered the guitar for my highest bid amount.  Not bad, a $5000 instrument for $700.  But obviously too good to be true.

I checked the bidding and found out that I was the SEVENTH highest bidder.  I suspect this con artist sent similar messages to every non-winning bidder on the list.

Here were the clues that this was a scam:

- instructions to contact seller directly

- promise that all eBay fraud protection applied, but the purchase would not have been handled through eBay

- links to URLs at the end of the message were not functional

- and the most obvious; it seemed too good  to be true and was.

One last note - as far as I know, the auction itself could have been legitimate.  I suspect that the person phishing me was not the seller, just someone who is tracking auctions with expensive items hoping to find a disappointed bidder gullible enough to bite.