MSE News: eBay cyber-attack: Change your passwords, auction site warns users

Cornucopia

Must be. The recorded announcements and both CS people I spoke with were American. I used the 0800 number I was given yesterday by CS on online chat for the "Security Team".

pennypincher2013

I've had an email titled Dear ebay Member, asking me to change my password if I haven't already done so. My first and surname and ebay user name appear in tiny writing at the bottom of the email.
I thought ebay never sent emails with Dear eBay member. Is this really from ebay or someone else...?
I haven't had this email for my 2nd ebay account. And I have changed email addys with ebay and this Dear eBay member email has gone to the new addy.
Also, was on live chat who said they would check if my account has been hacked and was told I would know in 48 hours. I understand they're very busy trying to clean up this mess but I've been waiting 6 days now and would prefer they didn't say 48 hours if they had no intention of that time frame.

marking_bad

They could at least give us some free listings, shows how much we'll put up with due to no real competition.

Cornucopia

It's been soooo quiet since I got back on eBay.

Anyone else having the same experience?

soolin

Cornucopia wrote: »

It's been soooo quiet since I got back on eBay.

Anyone else having the same experience?

It varies for me, I am beginning to believe in the switched on and off theory

Shockingly bad Friday and Saturday but it started going mad yesterday and its still going. I'm selling my bread and butter items as well as odds and ends across a lot of different categories.

No doubt it will all collapse again tomorrow

bxboards

pennypincher2013 wrote: »

I've had an email titled Dear ebay Member, asking me to change my password if I haven't already done so. My first and surname and ebay user name appear in tiny writing at the bottom of the email.

I also got a 'Dear ebay member' e-mail and assumed as it didn't address me as it usually would have, it was a scam mail. Although it did have my correct name at the bottom, but impersonal Dear member address screamed of phishing to me, so I deleted it.

lovinituk

Cornucopia wrote: »

It's been soooo quiet since I got back on eBay.

Anyone else having the same experience?

A few people have mentioned this on various forums. All seems normal for me at the moment. The weekend sales were even possibly a little higher than normal.

VictimOfImpersonation

Wednesday I received an email from eBay:

Subject: Check out the latest items from your favourite sellers on eBay

And?

It was addressed to an eBay member from Australia (I will add that I am not an eBay member from Australia).

So what was going on ?

I will tell you.

Tuesday I bought a cheap Windows Phone. In order to set up the Windows Phone store for downloading Apps I had to set up a Microsoft Windows Live account. Actually the phone was for my parents. I registered a new account in the form mumanddad@hotmail.com.

Have you guessed now how I came to receive an email addressed to an eBay user in Australia?

Yes, evidently mumanddad@hotmail.com had been used by another mumanddad half way round the world until at some point they didn't or couldn't use it in some random time period set by Microsoft and it got reallocated to me like a bloody telephone number!

I have little doubt that as mumanddad@hotmail.com is the registered email address for a live Australian eBay account, then there is therefore a pretty good chance that if I was so inclined, I might easily be able to hijack it!

Over a period of maybe ten or fifteen years, I've had a number of Microsoft email accounts for different purposes and I know I have lost an number of them by inadvertently locking myself out, or simply just growing tired of Hotmail. Hotmail has been through so many iterations over the years and been variously flakey at times (e.g. particularly susceptible to generic hotmail targeted viruses and it had serious capacity restrictions at the time gmail was launched as a breath of fresh air) - I stopped using Hotmail ages ago.

Anyway I kept a list of all the accounts. Just for a laugh tonight, I have tried to login on them (all of them failed). Then I tried to recreate new accounts and would you believe it, I then realised that all except two of about a dozen old email account addresses has been reallocated to someone else! Thank goodness I never had any eBay or Paypal accounts or anything else important associated with them. However I am wondering just what I may have had associated with them though!

The two that were not reallocated were just slightly out of fashion addresses - they were nevertheless "available" :mad:

I have a feeling that ... no wait a minute ... I just know that the world according to big players like Microsoft and eBay has gone completely stark raving bonkers. The big personal data controller with an M on the one hand has absolutely no idea of the consequences of their unilateral actions on the security of the same customers' personal data in the hands of the big personal data controller with an E or a P on the other hand.

And overseeing it all, with some kind of pontificating nonsensical twits at the helm we have government agencies like the ICO who haven't a bloody clue what I am talking about and are just watching threads like this with glazed eyes I guess.

BTW - if anyone wants mumanddad@hotmail.com, then as I haven't used it for at least a couple of hours, I believe it's available again

RFW

VictimOfImpersonation wrote: »

I have a feeling that ... no wait a minute ... I just know that the world according to big players like Microsoft and eBay has gone completely stark raving bonkers.

I never knew Microsoft redistributed email addresses. I expect it must happen with domain names that get registered elsewhere. I think I'll take my chances.
I've been a victim of identity theft and someone used my debit card to buy some Easy Jet tickets and some accommodation. Whoever it was had booked the cheapest holiday going. With that record if anyone ever hacks into my Ebay account they'll probably end up listing more rubbish than I do:p

Cornucopia

VictimOfImpersonation wrote: »

Wednesday I received an email from eBay:...

I'm not excusing their actions on this, as I think eBay have handled this cyberattack very badly.

However, there is an unfortunate characteristic of large systems, which is that they can create unexpected side-effects of their operation. And that's before you let the criminals and vandals lose on them.