I've had an email attempting to extort money by threats

[gallopinhairpin]

As per subject I've had an email attempting to extort money by threatening to circulate compromising information about me. I think this is a try-on because I haven't visited any sites that I'd be worried about people knowing. The thing that interests me is that the email address used to contact me is one I only use for my Ebay account so it would appear someone has hacked into the Ebay member database.

Anyone care to comment on this?

[right-then-petal]

Contact Ebay Through ( help and contact top of this page )

also change your password

never click a link you dont know, Others May Be Along to help with better advice

[gallopinhairpin]

There's no link for contacting ebay in help and contact. All the links are related to problems with items bought and sold or contacting Paypal. I couldn't find any way to directly contact ebay which is why I posted here.

Someone seemed to have got hold an email address that I only use for ebay and I thought that should be flagged up with them so if anyone has contact details I'd be grateful.

I never click links I don't know. This particular email didn't have any but seemed to imply that there was a virus embedded in the message that would be activated just by reading it. As far as I know this is not possible. I keep my antivirus up to date and run the normal Windows firwall. It hasn't raised any alerts and nothing's happened in the 48 hours specified in the email so it looks like it was, as I suspected, a try-on.

However as I said earlier I think ebay should be made aware that someone managed to get my email address through them.