eBay Shit, has this ever happened to you?

[space cadet]

On checking my emails this morning I got a message from ebay telling me I was the winner of an auction using Buy It Now! A magnetic swipe reader for $290!!! I wouldn't even know what to do with one!!! Which means that some sneaky f***er has hi-jacked my account and is buying on my behalf. How the hell this person got my password and why he/she is doing this is beyond me (it's not like I'm going to pay for the thing!), but pretty scary anyway. I have of course changed my password, contacted ebay and informed the seller...
Good thing I changed my PayPal password last week as it was the same!!

 

[amazingtrade]

Do you use hotmail by any chance?

 

[MO!]

i'm sure you're aware now that having your paypal password the same was a wee bit silly!

Never had this happen to me, but scary stuff!

 

[space cadet]

Originally posted by amazingtrade
Do you use hotmail by any chance?

Errr...yes...but just for receiving junk from mailing lists etc. not for ebay/paypal, and again a different password...why...is it not very safe?

And yes MO!, silly indeed, but i never expected anyone to crack any of the codes! If someone can hack into my ebay account surely they could crack a paypal password as well? I don't like this... I thought ebay was safe...

 

[lhatkins]

That is very scary, I use ebay and paypal quite a lot, I hate passwords I never remember them and really can be bothered to come up with new ones, so I'm stupid enough to have them mostly the same. Password are a pain in the arse, I get fed up with them enough at work, not everyone has a good enough memory to remember all of them, just does my head in!

 

[MO!]

I don't think hotmail is any MOre unsafe than other email providers. It's just that as probably the biggest, they're targeted MOst. It's like if some hacker/code kiddy is sat there, and he/she knows everything about windows and IE, then comes up against Linux or whatever, they're pooped. MOre likely to have knowledge of the MOst popular software.

I have a few passwords I use MOre than once. But if it's something important i'll have adedicated one. Write it down if you have to (pen and paper). Sounds silly, but don't save them as a txt file or anything called "passwords". CoMOn sense required!

Another thing..... when you have to enter a secret question. These are normaly limited in options. Fav colour, MOthers name etc.... Chances are it'll only take a few stabs to guess someones fav colour! And if they've the know how, names wont be too much trouble either. If it asks fav colour, don't say a colour, say a random word that you'll remember.

As said above though, scary stuff!

 

[auric]

ebay - paypal who pays?

A couple of links discussing the ebay / paypal business relationship and policies towards security, data sharing and law enforcement.

http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030707&s=engle
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/p...2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

Auric

 

[amazingtrade]

A few months ago a few students on the second year of my course manged to hack into hotmail just by typing some certain code in the subject, they some how managed to get access to other peoples password for that particular address. They reported it to Microsoft but maybe others found this out too and used it for ebay.

The problem is apparantly fixed now, but I have still heared of a few hotmail users being hacked into to send rude messages from their address. I think the safest is way is to avoid using web based services and stick to SMTP/POP3 outlook accounts but then these get hacked into in other ways.

I use lycos, it might be a bit safer than hotmail simply becasue its not as popular. I am slightly worried now after reading what has happened to you though.

Thanks for sharing it, I will be certainly be more cautious in future.

 

[MO!]

thread on the Hifi board http://zerogain.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=463