Sneaky Sneaky
by acdickson
AC has been getting a number of very official emails lately from member@eBay.com. It looks legit, the graphics are right and it mirrors the email you get from eBay on behalf of a member asking you a question or hoping you'll leave feedback. But this is internet hoax on steroids. Follow along and learn from AC's (very rare) folly.
The text of the latest communique was as follows.
Paid for this laptop and nothing happend. I'm still waiting to get it. Let me know asap what's the status of our transaction or i'll have to report you to eBay.
To view the item, go to: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/ebayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6793158957
Kind Regards,
Dave.
Naturally, I haven't sold a laptop, much less to a user named " j-auction". But if you click on the link that in theory will take you to the item in question (note the cgi in front the ebay.com), you first have to sign into your account. Standard protocol. This sign in page looks exactly like the official sign in page to eBay, but the domain begins minhostservices.com/. However, one might not be looking so close when one is suddenly worried that a thousand dollar sale is being held accountable to one's sacred PowerSeller account.
Upon reflection, I believe this was the ruse used to hacked into my account. If memory serves, the very first one of these I got caused me to think there had been some grave misunderstanding. (I can now see the humor in the item in question being a John Deere Tractor I had apparently sold). Eager to clear it up, I hit the link, signed in and was pleased to see the fake auction (that I didn't at the time realize was fake) was for a non-farm machinery item that I hadn't sold and was in fact not even purchased. I closed the window without giving it another thought. Little did I know that user name and closely guarded password were now in the hands of the enemy.
They got me. Riddle solved. I can only imagine what they did with my eBay user name and password. eBay won't tell me, remember?
I have to give these bandits credit, their techniques are evolving faster than my skeptical eyes can process. But fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice and I'll track you down and eat your unborn children. Or at least type mean things into your fake eBay sign in pages.
Posted on August 26, 2005 | Comments (3)
Y'all gonna to make me lose my mind
by acdickson
If you read my last post you know that Mr. AC Dickson tied the knot with his sweetheart susanstars a few weeks back.
Our wedding was a blast. The next day was not. Without getting too specific, the fallout from the wedding in regards to the venue was messy. But AC, Susan, and crew made lemon out of lemonades and took care of business.
Many, many hours of errands and cleaning later, the PowerSelling husband and wife were poised to open our litany of generous gifts and cards. Then I made the mistake of getting online.
I got a very official email that looked to be from eBay saying my account had been terminated. Okay, no need to panic. I get, on average, 10 emails a week from "PayPal" and "eBay" with all kinds of claims trying to get me to enter my account and password information onto a fake mirror site (not to mention emails from many credit cards I've never had and many banks I've never stepped foot in). ((quick aside, AC gets a special thrill out of going to those fake mirror sites and entering my user name as "You're" and my password as "going to hell". I figure every now and then it might kind of freak the pathetic perp out for a moment.)) So I figured this was along the same lines. Except there was no need to click on a link and type my information in, this was a TKO notice telling me eBay had severed ties with ole AC.
So I tried to access my account. Nothing doing. My password wasn't working. Panic was now setting in. Quickly I used Susan's account to sign in and search for acdickson's auctions. She/I was told that AC was no longer a member. Oh $%*#!
So here it was, not 24 hours even into my honeymoon and I'm unceremoniously bounced from the very company whose name I've sung from every mountaintop.
Of course eBay is not reachable on the phone. Same goes for PayPal, hotmail, yahoo and so forth. 1-800-555-1212 does not have anything on them. In this brave new economy they have figured out to save hundreds of thousands of dollars a years by not having customer service representatives standing by. Instead they have (and only recently have they had) eBay Live Help (find it on the eBay homepage).
Long story short. An hour and three transfers to better trained agents later, I'm told my account was hacked, and I'm reinstated after answering such questions as my street address 4 years ago and every email address I've had.
All in all, not too hard--just time-consuming--to get my account back up. But I do have a bad taste in my mouth. There were no warning shots from eBay, no heads up that my account was violated, nor that I was going to be shut down unless I cleaned things up. eBay just went ahead and canceled me. That is just not cool.
After spending a half hour internet session per day during most of my honeymoon I even got my new password and was able to enter my own account! Hallelujah!
But I still have no idea how my account was hacked, what the hackers did (I think they sent second chance offers for invented items to people from me, but I'm only guessing) and whether or not there are eBay members who've been taken by crooks using AC's good name, credit, and 1530 positive feedbacks.
Nor have I gotten from eBay any kind of apology or attempt to make sure my reinstatement went smoothly. It did not. I had to reopen my store and relist the entire contents of its shelf. All is all, not a pleasant experience.
And this isn't the first time. Susan got hacked last fall (on Election Night no less) and had a $5000 buy it now video camera posted under her username. The hacker required the unsuspecting buyer to wire transfer the money to the Philippines. If the thieves hadn't also hacked her yahoo account and diverted her incoming mail to a hotmail account she might not have noticed and several of the saps who emailed her in the next week (after she regained control of her account and ended the auction) offering $4500 for the camera might have found themselves $4500 lighter in the pants. Again, eBay was none too easy to get ahold of and not inclined to go out of their way to make things right.
Simply put, eBay talks a good game on being anti-fraud, but it's a one-way street down a narrow alley where they're speeding in a Trans Am and regular people like us are walking on crutches. WHAM, BAM, what just happened?!
Yes, they take care of business in the end, but how 'bout working with the person whose account was taken over or frozen? I'd like to tie up any loose ends, but that would of course necessitate eBay telling which ends are loose.
Now don't get me wrong, AC bleeds eBay red, blue green and yellow, but he's not above a transfusion. There are a number of competitors making noise these days, and we'd be a fool not to at least look into them.
Here's hoping that someone at eBay HQ reads this and takes the time out of their day to do some 'splaining and let me know what the hell happened.
P.S. Alphanumeric passwords are a damn good idea.
Posted on August 23, 2005 | Comments (2)
AC ties the knot
by acdickson
True story. AC Dickson has wed longtime lady friend Susan Beal aka susanstars. We got hitched August 7th at the Contemporary Crafts Museum in SW Portland.
I was told it was so beforehand, and I can now attest to the truth of the maxim... your own wedding is a blur. In our case we had 150 guests with about 3 hours to hang out with folks after you deduct the ceremony, pictures, toasts, and dancing. Do the math! That works out to be a little over a minute a person. A minute? And that doesn't even include talking to the person you just married, not to mention you really think your parents, siblings, in-laws, aunts, uncles, cousins, in-law aunts, uncles, and cousins, and family friends are going to settle for a mere minute? Man, there were a good 25 people I didn't even see! Just trust that you did your homework and worked out a good time/wedding and everyone involved had fun.
Was there an eBay aspect to the affair? Hell yes! Not only were our wedding invitations purchased on eBay, our officiant made an eBay joke during the ceremony.
Now who is this Susan anyway?
Susan is a remarkable woman. So much more than my partner in eBay PowerSelling crime. In fact, I'm going to sing her praises a little bit. Not only does she have a thriving jewelry business with beautiful things for sale in over twenty stores across the country, but she's become quite the journalist. She and her posse have a book coming out this fall (stay tuned for a Portland, Oregon book release party in late October with yours truly as MC). That's right, a book! But that's not all, Susan is making projects and writing for magazines all over the darn place these days. Hit your local magazine store and you can find her strutting her stuff in the latest issues of Venus, Bust, JoAnn, and Punk Planet. And I won't even mention the books she edits.
Did you notice I haven't even begun to illuminate her generosity, beauty, energy, intelligence, and eagle eye for spell-checking my eBay auction titles. To sum up, I'll paraphrase her mother's toast at our nuptials. There are two important questions to ask in regards to a romantic relationship. First off, is your work better? In our cases, no doubt. Since meeting one another 7 years ago AC and Susan have become people we could have only dreamt of being, doing things in our professional-slash-creative lives we could barely have imagined. Big check in the box there. We're a team and if you take us on we're going to take you down.
Secondly, her toast went, do you have more love for other people in your life? While AC doesn't throw the L work around loosely, he can certainly say that since knowing Susan he's come to embrace his fellow man and woman in a hug so tight he won't let go. I think this is another way of saying when you're lonely you might have a lot of company, but it's of the misery variety. But when you find yourself with someone like Ms. Susan Beal, you got so much love going on your friendships and relationship with all people become stronger and more fruitful.
eBay success is one thing (one very important thing), but finding a soul mate and declaring your love before friends, family and state is about as good as it gets.
Even if the eBay gods decide to put you to the penultimate test during your first 24 hours of marriage!?!?!?!
To be continued...
Posted on August 19, 2005 | Comments (4)