deskthority

I received an email from ebay today that my account is no longer active.

Account status: Not Live - Account Closed
This is a courtesy notice to inform you that your account has been closed.
Any remaining balance will be refunded to the payment method we have on file within one billing cycle.
If you wish to re-activate your account, please contact us.
Thanks and Best Regards,
Merchant Services
eBay Commerce Network

This seems a bit fishy to me. The pics at the bottom of the email do not show up, but they point to cl.exct.net
exct.net does not seem to be a registered domain. cl.exct.net says to click on the link if your page does not load in 5 seconds.

I realize the ebay email is a spoof, but how can they send you to a URL on an unregistered domain, and it works?

Emails are from the very early ages of the internet and have never been revised since. It's basically a long text with a destination address, everything else in that email can be forged and edited at will.

The main reason why we need spam filters and DKIM and greylist-daemons is the fact that at the time when email was designed there was no trust issue yet.

Everyone in the world can set up an email (smtp) server in a matter of minutes and start sending emails into the world where the sender is steve.jobs@apple.com or prezzy.obama@whitehouse.gov

If is totally up to your email server and email program to evaluate the validity of these informations. Same thing with links and other content of emails. Just consider your e-mailbox the same thing as your real mailbox. Anyone can throw a letter in there and anyone can get some logos together and print a letter that looks like official business.