Ebay Scare-Someone put up a fake auction using my account

[triple_green]

My son was doing his homework on our main computer last night (a rare sight) and he comes over to me and says "dad, are we selling an Indian Motorcycle on Ebay?"

Well,,,,I barely even ever been on a bike..let alone own one.....

Someone had gotten into my Ebay account and put up a fake auction for a 2000 Indian at a (too low) buy-it-now price.

One thing I hate about Ebay is, you can ever get a phone number to call a live person. So I filled out all of their "problem" forms that I could find. I also followed their directions to change my password, etc. This is really scary, because I am very careful about this stuff and won't even respond to any Ebay emails outside of the Ebay messaging system.

So I went in immediately and upped the price to $1M and put a big disclaimer in the item description that this was a fake auction...but still this really scares me!

By this morning, no one had responded to my (multiple) requests in the "fill out the form" process...so I finally found a "live chat" section and waited my turn to "chat" with a real person. It took about a half an hour, but they finally got rid of the auction and refunded me the $35 that was charged to put up this "fake" auction.

They said one of two things had happened:

1) someone had somehow "phished" my password. My wife and kids do know it ...but no one would admit to any situation where they could have given it out.

2) there is some kind of spyware send my keystrokes to a hacker somewhere to use against me. I have no idea how to deal with this..if it is the case.

This was a really sobering event   

3X

[bull]

That stinks. Is the account still usable or do you have to close it out?

[Drache]

I had this happen to me as well many years ago and someone listed a bloody Ferrari using my account! Luckily I found it and got everything sorted! Changed my password and never had another problem. I am VERY careful about phishing scams and such and it turned out to be a keylogger/keystroker that was the culprit. Now I do daily scans for them.

[dodgecharger-fan]

That is scary.

The Phishing is easier to miss than you think though. There are ads on eBay that will redirect you to an exact copy of the ad - but hosted on another site.
If you're not paying close attention, you'll miss the redirect.
Then, if you try to interact with the seller - ask a question, add to your watch list, bid, etc... - you're asked for your username and password - which is completely expected, right?
But you're on their site and not eBay, so they just collect your login info and thank you very much...

as for keyloggers - I always use a password safe and I just cut and paste my passwords when I need to log in. That way, I'm never actually typing in my passwords. All they could log as far as keystrokes is CTRL-v for the paste action...

[Ghoste]

Where can one get a "password safe"?

[chargerboy69]

I had that happen as well. E-Bay shut the auctions the scammers placed down right away.


As a side note E-Bay does have a number you can call. Do a search and you will see it. They also have a "Live Chat". You can talk one on one with a E-Bay employee within seconds. I have done that, and it works great.

[69bronzeT5]

Somebody hacked my old account and took it over. I couldnt log in one day. Reported it to Ebay and I check out the account once in a while to make sure theres no false auctions.

[70charginglizard]

That happen to me too a while back on e-bay Mark.

Just contact e-bay and let them know. They will put a stop to it very quickly

[histoy]

We had our account hijacked twice, and had people listing things we never sell.  Each time eBay alerted us of the problem and told us we had to enter a new password for our account.   They took care of the bogus listings for us.  When this was happening we were always staying logged on to our account.  Since it was hijacked the 2nd time, we started logging off everytime we visit eBay.  No problems since then.

[miller]

When I do a search I cant find the 2000 Indian... sounded like a good deal to me, thought I would pick it up.


This does suck though, people phish our myspace accounts all the time.... this is a little more serious though

[A383Wing]

Mark...it wasn't me...I didn't do it.

Bryan  (sorry 'bout that....yer lucky they didn't list yer cars)

[The70RT]

I had it happen too. Someone listed a Chevy SUV on my account and some how ebay caught it before I did and they closed my ebay account....go figure? I had to register again to get back on.

[BlueSS454]

Ebay is pretty good about these type of ordeals.  Someone did this to me about 2 years ago.  Ebay caught and fixed it before I ever found out about it.

[dodgecharger-fan]

Where can one get a "password safe"?

http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

and coffeecup gives one free with any other purchase: http://www.coffeecup.com/lockbox/

[Brock Samson]

mine was hacked on e-bay too,.. is there anyone who's hasn't been compromised?

Thanks for the safe info and link! 

[A383Wing]

I haven't been yet..... (where's that knock on wood smiley)

Bryan

[superduperbee]

I never log into ebay from my home browser page. I always do it through Firefox. Firefox also pops up a window if someone is trying to put a cookie in the computer, gives the option to allow it, ban it or always block cookies from the site. Haven't had any problems the past 2 years since I started doing it this way. Previously my account was hacked and a virus destroyed my hard drive.

[dodgecharger-fan]

I haven't been yet..... (where's that knock on wood smiley)

Bryan

ditto.

good tip superduperbee,
and I never, ever click a link to log in to anything. I always open up my browser, type in the address of the site and then log in from there.

[The70RT]

I haven't been yet..... (where's that knock on wood smiley)

Bryan

ditto.

good tip superduperbee,
and I never, ever click a link to log in to anything. I always open up my browser, type in the address of the site and then log in from there.

I never did either but they still hacked me.