I guess it can happen to anyone...

Like most people I think I'm pretty resilient. But still I do take basic precautions. I wear my seat belt, shred anything that could be used to lift personal information, don't write down passwords or PINs. Still most of the time I don't worry about fraud or identity theft, because usually I don't fall for sketchy offers and keep things relatively safe. And then there's eBay.

A few days ago my husband received an email from eBay that his listing for a Tiffany necklace set had been posted. He asked me if I'd posted it. Are you kidding? I don't own or have access to such jewelry. I assumed it was a fraudulent email. But something didn't sit right so I looked at our account. Sure enough there was a posting for the Tiffany set.

I contacted eBay live help. They determined that the posting was fraudulent. So they removed it. Then they gave us a temporary password. They've got additional security that identifies the computer you are using. If you should login from a computer other than the one you've registered with then you'll be asked some basic security questions before you log in.

All seemed well and it appeared that our PayPal account had not been compromised either. Until we decided to check eBay again. Neil (my husband) tried to login with his new password--the one he created after logging in with the temporary given by eBay. The security questions came up. He answered them. They are not difficult. I think one was his birthdate. So we sure he answered them correctly. But he could not login.

Somewhere along the way he received an message from eBay that the account owner name--for our account--is Theresa. No one in our house is named Theresa. So here we go back and forth and hours online trying to get this straightened out. After sometime working on it yesterday, I had to give up and go to sleep.

So today I'll be back at pushing aside my real priorities and hopefully cancelling the eBay account. How did this happen? Not sure. Neil could have clicked a phishing email though he never mentioned anything like that. Meanwhile if you'd like to learn more about eBay login fraud here's a good post by the Auction Spider. You can also wait and see what unfolds next in this ugly web.