Ebay/yahoo email hijacking of your account....watch out!

C

cjbate

Cathlete
Wanted to mention this here b/c I know a lot of you may use Ebay for things. Last night my husband and I got an email to our home email account stating that our yahoo email password had been changed. We knew it hadn't been us. We tried to sign in to our yahoo email and were unable to. The person had also changed our contact information already (apparently) in yahoo so the automated "retrieve your lost password" thing didn't work either.

While trying to contact yahoo we realized we better make sure our online bank accounts were secure, we went ahead and changed them even though they weren't exactly the same as our yahoo password.

Then we realized we might want to check Ebay. I was remembering this password was the same one we used for yahoo. Sure enough we were unable to sign in to ebay the same scammer had gotten to it too. I ended up contacting the live chat person at Ebay and found out that someone in germany/nigeria? had been bidding on a bunch of electronics in the last 24 hours, using our ID.

Ebay straightened it out, luckily we caught it quickly.

Meanwhile I changed paypal in time, it had a slightly different password thankfully...but I am pretty sure they could still have accessed bank accounts and things through Ebay, but it looks like we caught it in time.

My husband and I know enough not to respond to "Phishing" emails so my only guess is our mistake was that our password was a single word that is in the dictionary, and someone has some kind of way to test it enough to figure out what it was. That is all I can think of...

So just wanted to warn folks, make your passwords more complicated than that. This really freaked us out. I am hoping this is the end of it.

Jen
 
RE: Ebay/yahoo email hijacking of your account....watch...

Thanks for the heads up Jen. I've had my computer hacked into before too. You're right, it does freak a person out.

Jennie.


Live like you were dying.
 
RE: Ebay/yahoo email hijacking of your account....watch...

Some password suggestions:

1.) Most passwords are case sensitive so mix the letters up eg:

TwoWords
CoNsoNaNTS
vOwEls

2.) Use numbers for vowels eg:
A=4, E=3, I=1, O=0 ("u" well, be creative)

3.) use "filler" for short words eg:
asdfPASSWORDhjkl

4.) have strong unique passwords for email, ebay, paypal the bank etc. But for bboards (Cathe, Videofitness etc) feel free to use the same password that you can remember easy.

5.) confirmation security questions can be tough, but when asked what your mother's maiden name was the other computer isn't going to care if you give them the model name of your car. Make sure you can remember it though.

If you get to choose the question, don't use a question format make it a pair of words you remember that no one else would pair up eg: Twinkees nutritional

haven't been hacked yet, hacked my share (ethically)
 
Thanks for the ideas Dave. I had the same problem with my Ebay account once but they cleared it up very quickly. I've also had my check card number stolen twice...much more complicated! Feels like you've been violated.

Ruth
:-(
 
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