I hate eBay and it's policies

I got an e-mail today requesting that I check the suspension of my account and to go to the site and login and find out why I was randomly suspended. The red flag went up immediately. I haven't used my eBay account in two years. I never go to websites through an e-mail especially if they require login for any account (I had already gone to the header information and sifted out the offending IP, ready to report to it's ISP ... but this one was odd and seemingly genuine). So I go to Google, check eBay and can't get into my account. My password, mother's maiden name, etc wouldn't work. I reset my password through their system and promptly go to questioning eBay, and here's what I got.

The first live-help said he couldn't help me, so he sent me to fraud's live-help. Fraud's live-help was not much more helpful. These people have cookie cutter responses, and know absolutely nothing of the issues at hand. I am lectured for 30 minutes on how to respond to Spoof E-Mails. I try to get more information, maybe it was my mother (who owns an old computer of mine) who went to eBay, not knowing that I logged in ages ago and set it to remember password. I asked what the IP address was, no comment. I asked the geographic location of the IP, again, no answer, and avoidance. I asked if they would inform me on the investigation. A resounding "No". So I will never know who did, why, if they sold my password, if they're caught, or anything pertaining to the subject that I have a right to know about.

Anyone here a lawyer? I hate to bring a legal battle forward, but I know I didn't hand out my password, and eBay could've potentially endangered all that I've worked for over the years, and they're certainly not interested in informing of the resolution to my rights having been violated, but they'll protect people who buy/sell/hack eBay accounts. Not good business practice, and frankly I'm pissed that now I have to go to over a hundred websites and change every single password not knowing whether or not that sequence can ever be used again securely.

Anyone else had similar problems? Advice?

TogaMario said:

Advice?

Click to expand...

While it's probably going to be annoying, "Don't use the same password on a hundred websites" is my first thought...

-Hyp.

If I did that, there's no chance I'd remember any of them. On the other hand, I require access to many ... many websites on a daily-weekly basis, and typing in a separate password for each one would make for a much longer day. I do have the option of using FireFox to store them, but FireFox often gets confused and relying on it to keep up with it all is bound to become a problem (as it has in the past) when all the passwords decide to remove themselves (yes yes, I know I removed them by some action or another, but it certainly wasn't intentional, nor the desired result of my request).

TogaMario said:

If I did that, there's no chance I'd remember any of them.

Click to expand...

I've seen a system of using a root-plus-stem to keep passwords distinct.

Let's say the root is "gYgax"; the password here might be gYgaxen or gYgaxew, while at Amazon it might be gYgaxam. Or perhaps gYengax and gYamgax, to obfuscate the stem a little more.

This way, having one password compromised still gives you some security with the rest... though having two or three compromised leaves you with the same problem you have now.

-Hyp.

That's a pretty good method I also thought about sending my old password through a random seed generator and using a combination of the number and the text password. That way my password would be pretty easy to generate using just text as a reference, running it through my scrambler program, and copy/paste the results.

I have one password that I use for most everything, but each site has a 2 letter prefix before the password. So, let'd say the password I use for everything is "dragon22". When I am on Citibank's site, my password would be "CBdragon22" on ebay it would be "EBdragon22" etc etc
I am not at all surprised that they can't release any information.

I ran into something like this. I was able to narrow done whom was using my old e-bay name to a city but they wanted to hear nothing about it.


"BUY BUY BUY huh? Protection? What's that?" is all they think about. I've learned to be VERY careful on E-bay especially when I get something requesting my attention.

I ignore emails like that as they're usually phishing scams.

Agree with Darth K'Trava that you probably got phished with the original e-mail. The reason your login/password didn't work is that you weren't really on eBay; you were on some phishing site that was harvesting logins/passwords.

I would change as many of your passwords as you can get to, ASAP. Yeah, it's a pain in the butt, but a little paranoia on the 'net never hurts.

Joshua Randall said:

I would change as many of your passwords as you can get to, ASAP. Yeah, it's a pain in the butt, but a little paranoia on the 'net never hurts.

Click to expand...

You're only paranoid if you're wrong!