February 25, 2004

Cautionary eBay tale

The most recent posts (2/23 & 2/25) on this blog caught my eye while I was doing my nightly compulsive check of the "fresh blogs" on Blogger.

I'm not a huge eBay user, and I don't have a PayPal account (I read the terms of use and something about it made me very uneasy so I decided it wasn't worth the risk), but I'd gotten almost a dozen e-mails last year telling me that someone had tried to access my eBay account and change my password. I knew I hadn't even been to eBay in ages so I certainly hadn't tried to change it, so I ignored it. I figured that someone forgot their account name and thought it was mine, etc. After about the sixth time this happened, I looked up my account info and went there myself to make sure my password still worked. It did, no one had used my account fraudulently, I complained to eBay, the e-mails stopped and I didn't really think much more about it. Until today.

I really feel for anyone who goes through what she's going through and I'm glad that the sites where her info was used are working with her. I'm not surprised that the bank's not being very supportive, but I bet that with enough perseverance they'll eventually do the right thing. Her warning about not responding to any e-mails you get asking for eBay info is one to take to heart.