Purchased from hacked account....

gollum007

Arrgh....

Just attempted to purchase from what I'm now 99% certain was a hacked account.
Price was reasonable, if a little cheap, found browsing the new listings, where I've grabbed the odd misprice in the past.....

Alarm bells started ringing when I saw the PayPal email, which the sellers email was random gibberish (No relationship whatsoever to the account)

I then dug into the seller's feedback- Whilst there was a reasonable amount, and recently a bit in the same category, it was all odd items, no massive amounts listed, which they've now got
Item descriptions are all also completely different in style to the older ones, and my scam alarm went off the scale....

At the minute I've hastily reversed the PayPal payment (within about 10 mins).
Anything else I can do that I haven't thought of?

sham63

Did you check out normally via EBay/PayPal or pay directly to an email address in the item description?

gollum007

Normally via eBay, (hopefully!) not that stupid

soolin

gollum007 wrote: »

Arrgh....

Just attempted to purchase from what I'm now 99% certain was a hacked account.
Price was reasonable, if a little cheap, found browsing the new listings, where I've grabbed the odd misprice in the past.....

Alarm bells started ringing when I saw the PayPal email, which the sellers email was random gibberish (No relationship whatsoever to the account)

I then dug into the seller's feedback- Whilst there was a reasonable amount, and recently a bit in the same category, it was all odd items, no massive amounts listed, which they've now got
Item descriptions are all also completely different in style to the older ones, and my scam alarm went off the scale....

At the minute I've hastily reversed the PayPal payment (within about 10 mins).
Anything else I can do that I haven't thought of?

Firstly, I'm not sure what you mean by the paypal ID being random, mine don't have anything to do with my email address or ebay name either. For hacking purposes having a random sort of email address associated with your paypal is a good thing, harder for someone to guess and send spam emails to.

Secondly how did you reverse your payment, are you saying it showed as pending, which could be a sign of a hacked account as the next step would then be for them to send you a bogus request for payment via bank transfer on the basis that their email was broken.

gollum007

soolin wrote: »

Firstly, I'm not sure what you mean by the paypal ID being random, mine don't have anything to do with my email address or ebay name either. For hacking purposes having a random sort of email address associated with your paypal is a good thing, harder for someone to guess and send spam emails to.

Secondly how did you reverse your payment, are you saying it showed as pending, which could be a sign of a hacked account as the next step would then be for them to send you a bogus request for payment via bank transfer on the basis that their email was broken.

Via the PayPal site.

It was showing as pending there, and no person details like you normally get.
zishuo124y @ yahoo.com was the email address in question, just a string of random characters.

RoyaleMale

I've noticed a regular occurrence on ebay, a seller with over 100 feedback, mostly made up from buying.

Then out of the blue they sell an item for well below retail price but seem to have an infinite stock.

Then after they sell well over 20 or more the auction completely vanishes off ebay, not even appearing in completed items.

The con person in all likelihood quickly withdrew as much money as they could before doing a runner.

ballisticbrian

I've noticed a regular occurrence on ebay, a seller with over 100 feedback, mostly made up from buying.

Then out of the blue they sell an item

The accounts been hijacked by that point.

RoyaleMale

ballisticbrian wrote: »

The accounts been hijacked by that point.

It's not necessarily always a hijacked account, buyer builds up their feedback by buying cheap bits and bobs from China. Then once their feedback looks fairly highly rated they begin their con by selling a bulkload of fairly expensive items they do not have.

Quite often the seller will no longer be a registered user but the question is were they able to withdraw their money in time.

ballisticbrian

I don't think it's profitable or wise to discuss the best way for scammers to operate. In any case, the original poster makes good from eBay by very quickly buying mis-priced items in the newly listed view. It's kind of one of the risks he faces in his endeavour so has to make just-as-quick decisions as to whether the listing is valid or a scam.

qsk

gollum007 wrote: »

Via the PayPal site.

It was showing as pending there, and no person details like you normally get.
zishuo124y @ yahoo.com was the email address in question, just a string of random characters.

Random to you maybe: it's a perfect Chinese name...

soolin

RoyaleMale wrote: »

I've noticed a regular occurrence on ebay, a seller with over 100 feedback, mostly made up from buying.

Then out of the blue they sell an item for well below retail price but seem to have an infinite stock.

Then after they sell well over 20 or more the auction completely vanishes off ebay, not even appearing in completed items.

The con person in all likelihood quickly withdrew as much money as they could before doing a runner.

Not in this case though as the payment was showing as pending, so 'seller' had no access to it. It was more likely to be the 'sorry my paypal account has broken can you send a bank transfer instead' scam, and I'm not sure that many would fall for that one anymore.