So I'm clearing out my email before I go to sleep. Decide to clean out a mailbox that's pretty much dead - left over from my old marketing agency days. To my surprise, I see an email from eBay requesting that I pay for an item I supposedly purchased on the site.
I had to shake my head, as I knew I hadn't used this email address in years. I examined the email. In the area where eBay would insert the User ID of the buyer, was a series of numbers. Hmmm, strange ID. I try to check out the headers to see if the email came from eBay. This is close to impossible to do on the phone, so I examined the links - and indeed the email did seem authentic.
Within a few hours, an invoice was sent to the same email address, addressed "Dear 2679302013" with my name appearing at the top of the email.
It's after midnight, so I took to my laptop to research further. I perform an eBay bidder search by going to eBay's advanced search:
I find that this user ID made one purchase (the one I was invoiced for), but the purchase was made while I was on my radio show. I clearly couldn't have made this purchase. The User ID also showed eBay's new user icon with 0 feedback. By clicking on a user's feedback number, you can find out when the user first signed up for eBay. Clicking through I find that they signed up for eBay on a Saturday as well. Hmmm. I usually don't sign up for new accounts when I am on the air.
I went to eBay - and clicked the Customer Service link, hoping to send them an email alerting them of the impersonation. I was amazed to find that eBay's customer service takes phone calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was after 1 am at this point, but I figured, why not give it a shot.
The customer service representative (working from eBay's Salt Lake City hub) answered the call and listened to my tale of woe. I had forgtten several things:
Lesson learned? If you have old email accounts, be sure to check them regularly. If I would have followed my own advice, I might have noticed the initial registration email that came from eBay (sent 2 days after the user registered the bogus account) welcoming me to the site. I sincerely wonder why eBay no longer requires an email address confirmation from those who open an account. If they'd have, the user would not have been able to make a fraudulent purchase - as I'd not confirmed the authenticity of the address.
I recommend in my books to let brands know when they have done something right; when you are pleased with their service. (They must get so sick of social media complaints, that a compliment usually brightens their day, and the reply with a "thank you." So next morning, I used Twitter to thank @eBay (and @AskeBay) for their CSR's excellent service. All I got back was the sound of crickets - no response.
I had to shake my head, as I knew I hadn't used this email address in years. I examined the email. In the area where eBay would insert the User ID of the buyer, was a series of numbers. Hmmm, strange ID. I try to check out the headers to see if the email came from eBay. This is close to impossible to do on the phone, so I examined the links - and indeed the email did seem authentic.
Within a few hours, an invoice was sent to the same email address, addressed "Dear 2679302013" with my name appearing at the top of the email.
It's after midnight, so I took to my laptop to research further. I perform an eBay bidder search by going to eBay's advanced search:
I find that this user ID made one purchase (the one I was invoiced for), but the purchase was made while I was on my radio show. I clearly couldn't have made this purchase. The User ID also showed eBay's new user icon with 0 feedback. By clicking on a user's feedback number, you can find out when the user first signed up for eBay. Clicking through I find that they signed up for eBay on a Saturday as well. Hmmm. I usually don't sign up for new accounts when I am on the air.
I went to eBay - and clicked the Customer Service link, hoping to send them an email alerting them of the impersonation. I was amazed to find that eBay's customer service takes phone calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was after 1 am at this point, but I figured, why not give it a shot.
The customer service representative (working from eBay's Salt Lake City hub) answered the call and listened to my tale of woe. I had forgtten several things:
- eBay keeps all the data user's input when you sign up for an account
- IP addresses are attached to transactions
- eBay sends out an email upon opening an account
Lesson learned? If you have old email accounts, be sure to check them regularly. If I would have followed my own advice, I might have noticed the initial registration email that came from eBay (sent 2 days after the user registered the bogus account) welcoming me to the site. I sincerely wonder why eBay no longer requires an email address confirmation from those who open an account. If they'd have, the user would not have been able to make a fraudulent purchase - as I'd not confirmed the authenticity of the address.
I recommend in my books to let brands know when they have done something right; when you are pleased with their service. (They must get so sick of social media complaints, that a compliment usually brightens their day, and the reply with a "thank you." So next morning, I used Twitter to thank @eBay (and @AskeBay) for their CSR's excellent service. All I got back was the sound of crickets - no response.
Thanks for the reminder, Marsha! I'm going to go back through my old email accounts right now!
ReplyDeleteRae, this is something i didn't think about lately. I was pleased that eBay recognized the issue. But still I think verifying email addresses would be an important step.
ReplyDelete