I had some weird emails today regarding my account. It seems two sellers were responding to several questions I asked yesterday. However, I have not used in Ebay in several months, so I know the initial questions weren’t initiated by me.
I also received a message in what appears to be Chinese, which may be a password change confirmation, so I’m wondering if my account was compromised. I changed my password as soon as possible. There does not appear to be any bidding or selling activities.
Why are two people responding to questions I didn’t personally ask? I have translated the email using Babelfish, and it does seem to be a password change confirmation, with the requesting IP address.
The most disconcerting thing, is that I have always deleted the spoof emails I have received (only maybe 1-2 ever), and none terribly recently. Do I have anything to worry about regarding personal information being compromised? Any other suggestions?
I have sent an email to Ebay support (24-48 hour estimated turnaround), so any replies here would just let me know your opinions.
Unless you’ve clicked a link in a fake email and provided some login details at what would have looked like an ebay page, but wasn’t, then your account probably isn’t compromised, indeed the emails you’ve received may be an attempt to phish your details.
To be on the safe side though, log into your ebay account (go directly there in your browser - don’t click any email links to try to get there) and change the password - that should put a stop to any unauthorised access.
Thank you. To clarify, these emails were questions regarding current auctions, and were sent via the messaging tools in Ebay. These emails were viewable in my Ebay mailbox.
(edit) Both sellers were from France, and both auctions were regarding mobile phones.
eBay and PayPal now offer their customers a security key (via VeriSign) for $5 that you can link to your account that you use every time you log in. It generates a new code for each login and so even if you get phished, the hacker’s stolen information will only work for 2 minutes. I think if you have a commercial account, the key is free. It’s worth looking into for the added security it gives you.
This exact same thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I have bought a total of about five things on ebay, nothing in several months, I am zealous about deleting phishing emails, but somehow I started getting these same messages.
I contacted ebay support and they investigated. They found that someone had indeed taken control of my account for a brief time. My password was reset and they may have done some other security stuff.