Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi guys. Someone just stole my ebay identity and is listing stuff from Bejing China under my account name. I also can't log into my account and they changed my e-mail to contact address!

I e-mailed ebay- have any of you had this happen before?



Craig Lavin

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www.handcraftinlay.com

you DIDNT ever reply to those spoof emails about logging in to update your eBay acct did you?

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

No I didn't. What happened was I checked my mail and saw dozens of new listings. Then I got a change of e-mail address notice. It said in the notice if I didn't ask for it to be changed to alert the fraud department. I then went to ebay.com (not from the e-mail- seperately) and alerted their people. I don't know how they got the info. Maybe too easy a password?

Craig L

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www.handcraftinlay.com

Scroll down to the link for contacting ebay when your account has been stolen:

Ebay securing your account page

For those who have ebay accounts, there's some good stuff on that page about how to keep your account secure.

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D..

Wow....there are a lot of snakes in this world eh?
Sorry to hear it Craig. I hope it gets fixed soon!

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

is my rating?
Why else would someone steal an ebay identity?
They can't access my bank info from there.
Right???
Obviously I know it's being done. How dumb are these people??
Does ebay think I really thnk I moved to Bejing China?




Craig

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www.handcraftinlay.com

Craig,

The issue here is that Ebay doesn't really "THINK" at all. It is essentially a set of automated systems that are for the most part inter-related and somewhat integrated.

This automation is what makes Ebay economically viable in the first place. Situations such as yours are probably handled on an exception basis by Ebay staff that are probably overloaded most of the time. This type of fraud, identy hijacking, etc. is nothing new. Computer and communications technology is just the latest venue for it.

Good luck and be persitant with Ebay customer service. Be a PITA. Sometimes that is the only way to get results.

Regards,
Chris

Craig,
when all the smoke clears. email me and we will take these guys out to play some night golf. Man...I realy get upset over these types of things...

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Dave Bland

remember...

"If it doesn't play in tune...it's just pretty wood"

   I just went through this . Ebay froze my account and helped me get things straightened out. You can try emailing
sven@ebay.com
tell him what is going on. What is your ebay handle? try this number 866-515-3229

Dave

Would that be a round of the Gator Golf

Cudos to ebay on this one. Within 4 hours I had a response saying all the listings (over 60 or more!) were removed, and that all the fees for listing were credited to my account. That's the catch. I didn't know there was a listing fee. I haven't used ebay for selling in a long time. All I remember were selling fees. Guess that's why they want to use others to list.
I set up a new more complicated password, and I think It's all good now. We'll see. The important part is that they didn't question me, got on it fast, and did the right thing.

Thanks for all the support!
Craig L

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www.handcraftinlay.com

[QUOTE=highdrawlicks] Welcome to the club. The day before I left on vacation I discovered that my Visa card had been highjacked online. I only have two "secure" accounts on the net: Paypal and Ebay/Half.com. Not sure which one got highjacked, but fortunately for me they snagged an expired card and the Visa fraud dept caught it. I even had a couple of charges in euros on it. Apparently "secure" is a relative term when it comes to the world wide web.[/QUOTE]

Good passwords, frequently changed passwords, and having a bare minimum amount of credit card info on the net helps. The only places that have my credit card details on file are Amazon (who will ONLY ship to addresses they've already shipped to with the card in question, so that's safe) and Play.com (ditto). PayPal doesn't, as I simply transfer direct from my bank account to my PayPal account (cheaper, and free).

Keep in mind that credit card fraud does not necessarily originate on the web, even if the fraudulent use takes place on the web (kind of hard to use a credit card in a store without the actual card). It's perfectly possible that the card details were stolen in a 'regular' retail store venue, which isn't any less safe (or more safe) than a proper e-commerce site.

Working in a college IT department, I see password problems all the time. The key is complex passwords with both letters and numbers and maybe a couple of $ or ^ or even a ~. Use both capitals and lowercase letters and make the password at least eight characters long. There are many sites out there that teach people how to hack peoples passwords. The harder you make it for them to do, the less likely they are to do it.

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Joe Breault
Merrimack, NH
Perpetual novice