Ebay and PayPal (continued)

I just got an email from eBay asking me to click thru and verify some information.  It says that if I don’t do this my account will be deactiviated as of March 15th.

How do I know this is a legit email?

How do I know someone isn’t phishing eBay?

How do I know the link doesn’t take me to some site where I will be shot full of spyware?

I am not going to click on the link but I will go visit eBay and hopefully they’ll hit me with the same message when I get there (if in fact its legit).

This is a real problem and somebody needs to come up with a solution for it.

UPDATE: I went to eBay, checked out my account, looked at some auctions, etc and was never asked to verify my account.  I assume the email was phishing and I have deleted it.  This is nuts!