Thread: Ebay account hacked!

I logged into my account to find that I appeared to be offering a load of toys for sale in a currency that wasn't my country's currency! Of course I contacted Ebay, changed my password and they sorted it but how could anyone profit from that?

You probably sent someone your password in a phishing email at some point. I'm sure they were putting up ads for buy it now products to score some money real quick and use your nice 100% positive feedback to do it. Not too uncommon.

Originally Posted by jkennedy

You probably sent someone your password in a phishing email at some point. I'm sure they were putting up ads for buy it now products to score some money real quick and use your nice 100% positive feedback to do it. Not too uncommon.

It's true that I have a 100% feedback but I have never, ever replied to a phishing email in my life. It's something that I'm really hot on. My password now though is a much stronger one!

The only way I think they could do that is to front the fraudulent company through your account, have all monies transferred to their own (or another hacked one) and the funds would eventually end up to their account. Unless they had loops over loops (ebay > ebay > ebay > random paypal > random other paypal > them) I don't see any way possible.

Could it have been accidental? You say that you have a strong password now, so that suggests that you didn't have before. Maybe it was such an easy password it was used by other people anyway and your username is common knowledge.

Originally Posted by sussedout

Could it have been accidental?

That's what I thought and Ebay were very quick to remove all the adverts, and the charges they'd put on my invoice. I notice that they didn't tell me what they had done to the seller or offer any explanation though, just advised me to change my password!

I don't think you have to reply to a strange email to have your account phished. That could have happened via email, possibly in other ways too. I'm glad you got it sorted out without any damage done.

Define what your strong password consists of. Most times when I hear this someone says its strong and its not, I mean no offense by this. The best type of password is not a dictionary name, not something that ties to you personally. It would also consist of numerous letters, numbers & special characters.

Bad password: mypassword
Strong password: !^&@MY(##|pass-(^&word$-

Helpful tool

Originally Posted by kat

Define what your strong password consists of.

Thanks for the tool. I tried my password in it and it came out strong, though not the strongest but I'm happy with it since my old password came out as weak.

I tend to shy away from selling anything on Ebay now a days because they do not seem as reliable as they used to. I say if your going to sell anything use Amazon.