eBay users/sellers...BEWARE!!!!

My eBay account was hijacked this weekend. As luck would have it, I just happened to be checking my email when the listings started pouring in. Someone had somehow secured my password and started listing items.

The listings were fully loaded, meaning that every charge that could be used, WAS. They had expensive items with a reserve price. I changed my password almost immediately, but there were 10 listings before I had finished. All the listings were single day listings, so the person was banking on the fact that I wouldn't log in over the weekend. I'm pretty sure they would have collected the money via paypal and then never shipped the items, leaving me holding the bag. Luckily, I was able to cancel the auctions as well. This left a$35 charge on my account for the insertion fees.

I then cancelled the account, which stinks, because I was just building up a good rating (I will open a new account with a new name, and should be able to transfer the feedback). I then contacted eBay to dispute the charges.

I got a lovely little letter from them telling me THEY cancelled the auctions (already done, morons, as I STATED in my email), but at least they are crediting the account.

Take heed:

Be sure to run a virus scan and update your virus software. I run TWO firewall programs (ZoneAlarm AND Microsoft's firewall), 2 spyware programs, AND Norton Antivirus. STILL, something managed to disable both the firewalls, and bypass the spyware and and the virus software...because I don't run it on a regular basis. Now, I have set it up to run scans on a daily basis, since I spend so much time on the internet.

And if you haven't changed your password in awhile, now's a good time to do it. Found a hint on how to choose a password that you can remember, yet is unique for each site...

Say your birthday is January 6....you would use your birthdate the name of the site...so if you were logging on to Yahoo, it would be yahoo0106, logging onto blogger it would be blogger 0106, etc.

Now, this isn't always going to work, because someone might have that password too, but you can use variations (date on the end, just the month and year, day and year, or date in the middle, like blog0106ger).

I think my login for eBay was stolen by someone using keycount software. They're using this software to steal passwords at financial institutions too...all the more reason to be running firewalls and antivirus software...these unscrupulous people plant a virus to disable your firewalls then steal your info!!!!