theregister.co.uk — A hacker has once again managed to pilfer eBay credentials that allow him to masquerade as an official company representative even as he taunts eBay officials on the company's message boards. It's at least the second time the person going by the name Vladuz has pulled off the prank, which is causing many users to question the adequacy of eBay secur
Feb 23, 2007 View in Crawl 4
ecraterFeb 23, 2007Submitter
Here's what worries me about this situation...I don't think vladuz really cares so much about whether he/she makes any money from ebay auctions BUT that doesn't mean he/she won't sell the hack to as many other wannabe scammers as he/she hears from. I think vladuz wants to get ebaY scared *and* get respect and money from fellow scammers or black hat hackers.I fear for people who have signed up for ebaY and PayPal and still have their credit card info and or bank account info on file. They're vulnerable to anybody who either gives vladuz money for the hack or figures it out on their own. Potentially that's a HUGE number of people worldwide. This is the mother of all online shopping trainwrecks waiting to happen.I have *called* everyone I know over the last 2 days (when I first heard about this story) from current sellers down to people who bought something on ebaY once or twice but haven't been there in ages much less done any transactions. I have warned them to watch their account activity (ebaY emails, PayPal emails, credit card and bank statements like hawks).Several of them who are mostly buyers asked me if I thought they should close their PayPal accounts. I replied that I didn't think that would be a bad idea, especially if they have any significant amount of credit available to them or significant sums of money in the attached checking/savings accounts. I suggested that for those sellers who are going to be dumb enough to insist on payment by PayPal only that my friends who are buyers only go to the mall/grocery store/bank, get one of those preloaded credit cards and use only that with their PayPal account. This is what I do and as a potential victim, the fraudsters can only make off with the balance of my preloaded credit card (which right now is less than $5)But I don't have any advice for sellers since PayPal makes them have a bank account...any of you have any ideas on how you could protect yourselves???Maybe in protest we all ought to dump our PayPal accounts? I just don't know what will get ebaY motivated short of legal action, civil and or criminal.