posted on March 22, 2002 03:47:23 PM
Troy Wolverton here from CNET News.com.
eBay says that it is seeing a new type of scam. Basically, scam artists are breaking into the accounts of legitimate sellers and using using their reputable user IDs to set up fraudulent auctions. Bidders think they are buying from a legitimate seller because of the high feedback and they don't find out that it's someone else until they don't get the goods they won.
Has this type of thing happened to you as either a bidder or a seller? Do you know anyone who might have been affected by a scam like this?
If you do, please let me know. You can reach me at [email protected] (or on this board).
posted on March 22, 2002 04:13:55 PM
How would they get the password to the accounts? They must not be dealing with active sellers (or bidders) - How awful!
posted on March 22, 2002 05:21:12 PM
I once saw a seller that was promoting his other auctions with an html link. The problem was that he was leaking people to his My e-bay page. Sure he just linked to the “Items that I am selling tab” but I then had access to his account simply using the navigation tabs. He was lucky that I was not a hacker, as there were a lot of things I could have done with his account. BTW he had over 5000 in feed back.
posted on March 22, 2002 05:21:16 PM
active seller with high feedback constantly checks his listing,it is not possible to list without him spotting it.
there is a prior thread of a woman seller who allows a jewelry dealer to use her user id to list jewelry items,she collects money and he ships until one day he stops shipping and hack into her paypal account and took the money/
she said he works with several sellers and is active on yahoo and ebay.
most sellers monitor progress of his auctions ,it would be hard to slip items into his listing.
also he will be receiving emails of all his auctions
posted on March 22, 2002 06:37:20 PM
I've heard of this, but I've never seen it. People have hacked into eBay in the past, but I would imagine that this would be extremely difficult today.
It would be much easier to set up an ID, run a bunch of phony auctions with Buy It Now that your cronies or other false IDs tally up for you, and then start scamming up a bundle before disappearing with the dough.
Similar sounding IDs to legit sellers might make this gambit more plausible.
PS I've seen this guy's byline on CNET so lay off the troll bit.
[ edited by mballai on Mar 22, 2002 06:56 PM ]
posted on March 22, 2002 07:03:09 PM
No it is for real. An acquaintance told me she won an auction last week and became suspicous when the address to which the money was to be sent was in another state than the contact information revealed. She called the telephone number eBay provided and the party knew nothing about that auction or a similar one listed. She did notify safeharbor and the party she called changed her ID and password.
buyhigh
posted on March 22, 2002 08:40:20 PM
I forgot to mention that the item this party won was a computer for about $700.00 I am not sure of the exact amount and the address that was given for payment was in Las Vegas Nev. Rather than hacking into e-bay, could not this be a case of hacking into an individual seller's computer?
buyhigh
posted on March 22, 2002 08:46:29 PM
I guess there are crooks everywhere. Nothing is sacred anymore and that is to bad. If this is true, and I wish it was a joke, keep us posted.
posted on March 23, 2002 05:26:11 AM
I just had a bidder contact me about a person I did business with last year. Apparently, someone hacked into his account and started selling expensive items. My former customer was a sporadic buyer and a very nice man, who I actually met in person when he picked up his item from me. The scammer sold under his name, using my buyer's account and defrauded this particular user out of $6,000, I am told. This bidder is very unhappy and I am sure there are others that are also unhappy.
Also, last month, someone bid on one of my items and won. End of auction noticed bounced back to me, so I went through the eBay system to track the bidder and it was registered to a Las Vegas user. Called the user and she advised she did not buy anything from me. Hadn't used eBay in over a year and the email address was old and hadn't been updated with eBay. She advised someone must have hacked into her account and placed this bid. I earned my first negative feedback over this particular auction, when she contacted eBay, changed her password and updated her current email and saw the negative I posted to her account. I still can't believe someone hacked into her account and bid on just 1 auction. It would seem to me that a true hacker would want to wreak havoc, not tick off just one seller (similar to my first example). In any event, I guess I earned that negative.
In response to the original poster, I could contact the user who emailed me and ask if he would want to contact you to discuss his own particular circumstances.
posted on March 23, 2002 06:33:18 AM
why bother,there is a user id SON-surplus of nashville with feedback of 13 (net),took off with a few hundred thousand dollars.
he ran a few auctions,bidded on a few small items and then launched dutch auctions,prices were so good and shipping ups next day air is free,bidders bidded merrily and sent money.
then he told them shipping will be within 30 days so he can use that time to scam more and collect more dough before someone blows the whistle on him.
posted on March 26, 2002 04:48:00 AM
Troy, I have passed along your post to the buyer. I assume he will be in contact with you shortly.
I hope your story can help this bidder and not just make eBay look like a bunch of scam artists.
The problem I see in this particular situation is that inactive accounts are being used to scam others - i.e., where the user hasn't been at eBay for months or even a couple of years.
I personally would like to see eBay deactivate accounts which are more than 6 months old with no bidding activity or selling activity. Of course, a prior email from eBay to that particular user would be helpful in case someone does want to continue. This would also ferret out email addresses that are no longer valid on their eBay registration.
Scam artists are everywhere, not just the internet world. When someone tells me of a bad experience they have had on the internet, they seem to forget and blame the entire internet or venue. EBay is like a large city and like any other city, the scum of the earth shows up every now and then.
However, it would seem that like the "real world", law enforcement and reporters could make a difference with thorough investigations and fair and responsible reporting.
Please email me with your story - I would be interested in knowing the results ([email protected])
posted on March 27, 2002 11:48:00 PM
I have a friend who used to sell on the bay. She hadn't used her account in about 2 months and she was hacked. There were several auctions running via her user ID and she had received several negatives. E-Bay suspended the account and told her they couldn't remove the negs...
Guess who is supposed to pay the fees? She is.
Never, ever, ever use the same password on eBay that you use anywhere else. The same for PayPal.
posted on March 28, 2002 02:49:14 AM
Scam artist abound in ebay and other auctions. I was almost scammed twice this month on large purchases. Fortunately, my merchant account bank is very tough. they alerted me that the billing address did not match shipping address before I shipped the product. In one instance the bidder was from Indonesia (no more international for me). The other instance was a fraudulent address and phone number(which I always verify). This adds to the delivery time and does piss off bidders because our warehouse will not ship internet orders until all verification and money is released. (actually a good thing) , saved me 1500.00 in losses.
i think I need to add why my deliveries take so long in my listing comments even though it may deter some bidders.
What are your thoughts?
http://www.willselldealoftheday.com
posted on March 28, 2002 08:25:12 AM
This is a scary thing - I was lurking the safe harbor user posts last nite and this stuff is rampant -there hacking low fb accounts and using them to bid on their scam auctions to entice legit bidders to buy - the Real seller gets charged listing fees and gets stuck with the id theft problems - These guys are listing 7k $ plasma tvs and doing the featured listings etc. Imagine the bill for that showing up on your ebay statement. Read the post and the article.
This Warning posted at another site Im a member of -*****
Hello *******users,
I just finished reading the third article recently on the topic of eBay password/ID "hijacking" and personally wanted to make sure everyone in the C**************r community is aware of this problem.
In a nutshell, there are malicious individuals out there that have written programs to guess ebay passwords by using a "password guessing robot" and a dictionary of popular passwords (cat, dog, common names, pet names, etc.). Once a password has been guessed they log into your ebay account, post fraudulent auctions and basically destroy your eBay identity.
The primary targets of this kind of attack are sellers with very high feedback - which pretty much describes our user base.
At C*************r we take this very seriously and you'll see us working on features in *** shortly to help augment eBay's password protocol.
I wanted to suggest to everyone that reads this to use this opportunity to change your eBay password and make sure that:
1. It is not a real word or name (cat, dog, Fred, Mack, Rover, etc..)
2. You use a combination of letters and numbers
3. You use at least 8 characters/numbers.
4. It's also good practice to change your password every 90 days or so and to not write it down.
examples of good passwords (all fictitious of course)
posted on March 28, 2002 08:55:42 AM
i dont understand-
u said they target sellers with high feedbacks??
and use their id to list and bid on scam auctions??
sellers with high feedbacks are active sellers who monitor progress of their own auctions,they will be getting email notifications that items are inserted and they have bidded on other seller auctions.
they could suppress these emails thru ebay preference,but if someone uses their id to bid on scam auctions and won,how do you expect the person to pay?
or is it used to push the bidding price higher??
posted on March 28, 2002 10:33:24 AM
I just learned about this last nite reading posts at my other auction listing service. I was A bit un nerved by the Support persons Warning and the Article referenced by the link - Decided to see if there was anything about it on the ebay community boards and sure enough - There are gads of people there posting links to fraudsters and exposing them. From what Ive seen and read This is what happens - The Scammers pick a seller with good feedback and few negs - They try to get his password using a special program, designed to attempt logins using combinations of common words names numbers. Once they get your password they immediately change it and lock the real seller out- from that point on ( until the real seller can convince safe harbor to freeze the account because its been hacked) The scamster owns your account and can change email addys notification prefs and about me pages - They can also try to hack your billpoint account.The current auctions are left active and Scam auctions are added - The seller dosnt know what happens unless he tries to log in. There using the high Fb accounts to list items and lower Fb accounts to bid on the auctions and attract real bidders - I dont know what the scheme for payment is **** Ebay is undecided about how to handle this - an option is to put a account lock on after 3 or 4 log in attempts but they would have to have 24 hr support staff to man phones so people could unlock their accounts after hack attempts and failed logins - Ebay is ending the auctions and freezing the hacked accounts as they find them. This made my hair stand on end when I read it. Ebay (and us sellers) could lose most of our customer base in a week if the media hits this hard enough.
