As more and more people take advantage of the option of buying things online, and especially during the holiday season, cyber crooks continually devise new schemes to trick them into handing over their hard earned money.

Trend Micro researchers have recently spotted fake eBay pages offering the latest incarnation of Apple's popular iPhone for more that half the real price.

The pages themselves are almost perfect copies of the pages set up by legitimate sellers, and all the links except the "Buy It" button are linked back to legitimate eBay pages. The fake pages are hosted on domains that are followed by /www.ebay.ie/ in order to give an impression of legitimacy.

Once the user clicks on the "Buy It" button, he is taken to a fake checkout eBay page where he is asked to fill out his personal and credit card details:


When he has filled it all up, he is asked to contact the seller via email - something that buyers aren't requested to do when shopping on eBay.

"This is most likely a scam that aims to steal money and personal information from its victims," conclude the researchers. "The iPhone 4S is one of the top smartphones in this year’s holiday sales, and clearly the cybercriminals are taking advantage of its demand."