Error in my Ebay account

[mijewen]

There is an error in the figures on my Ebay account that worries me.  If I was the victim of a scam that exploited this error, it could financially ruin me.  As I know about the error, if I do not try to get it corrected, then from a legal  perspective, I have accepted it.  As I can be identified through this community support channel, I don't want to discuss it here in detail, but I had Ebay support call me, and they were unable to do anything about it.  They said I should contact another company - but I had already done so.  Their support was unable to correct it, and told me it was an Ebay problem, and told me to contact Ebay - which seems more logical to me also.

I asked Ebay support for a contact with more authority than she had, who would be able tpo look into it.  She refused any such contact, and peromptorily ended the call.

I must stress that at this time, I have not lost anything, but although the chances are probaably slim, I believe I could lose half the value of my house.  It could be that in reality, I am being over-dramatic, but this is nonetheless a real concern.

Where do I go from here?

[61stephenuk]

We cannot see your account details and with so little information and not even a suggestion of where you are seeing these errant figures i'm afraid there is nothing we could suggest to help you especially as eBay and 'another company' have both said they were unable to do anything about it.

If you would like to message one of us mentors privately with more information rather than posting here then it may be possible to shed some light on your issue

[mijewen]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, if I can discuss it with an individual, that would be better than
baring my soul to the community at large - however, if your tech support
is unable to access the file in question, is it likely that somebody in the
community will be able to do so?

What I was really asking was the name of somebody with the necessary
authority to correct problems that are not addressable by Tech Support. If
you can give me an individual name, I will explain the issue, and we'll
take it from there.

Thanks,

Mike Collins.

[*vyolla*]

Without having any clue as to the nature of the issue its nigh on impossible to try and point you in the right direction.

I cannot imagine a loophole on eBay that would allow somebody to compromise your account and obtain tens of thousands of pounds, there's only one scenario I can think of in which that could occur, but that loophole was closed years and years ago. 

There are lots of techy people here who can likely help.

[mijewen]

My problem : I'm averse to giving my bank details to every company where I
might buy things, so I do most of my purchasing through Paypal. That way,
they have my bank details, but they are one of very few.

Paypal has a payment channel open in my name to Ebay, and the details of
that channel show that the "billing limit" is an absurdly high figure -
more than I can imagine anybody ever using on Ebay - unless you are in the
business of property sales. I will certainly never purchase anything that
will cause that amount to be billed against me. As I know about this, if I
do not get it addressed, then I believe that legally, I have accepted it -
and I don't accept it.
I am baffled why anybody should have thought that my billing limit should
be hundreds of thousands of pounds.

I contacted Paypal first, and spoke to a tech support person, but as
payment channels are security-protected, she was unable to see the figure,
and told me that in any case, it would be set by Ebay, so I should contact
you.

Frustrated by being caught between Ebay and Paypal, each one accusing
the other, I wanted to speak to somebody with more authority. Ideally,
this would be the manager of Buyer Protection, but I have no idea who that
would be, so I looked up the names of board members. I didn't raise the
matter to anybody there, but I was intrigued to see the commonality between
Ebay and Paypal. Apparently, it was all one company until May 2015.

So who should I speak to about getting this figure amended? I don't have
any real mistrust of either Ebay or Paypal, but I am constantly reading of
companies being hacked into, and people on their customer or associate
databases being targeted with scams or frauds, and I don't have any reason
to believe that either Paypal or Ebay is immune from being hacked into. In
fact, I feel that writing to a public support forum on Ebay could possibly
attract unwanted attention to the matter.

[61stephenuk]

Easiest solution would be for you to turn on 2-step or multi factor authorization for your Paypal account and review your managed devices.

For further safeguards your account you could add a passkey,all information can be found from the links below

https://www.paypal.com/us/cshelp/article/what-is-2-step-verification-help167

https://www.paypal.com/us/cshelp/article/what-is-multi-factor-authentication-and-a-remembered-device...

[mijewen]

Thank you, guys, for the advice. It seems that the cause of my issue
cannot be changed, even though it was put there by either Ebay or Paypal in
the first place - so it's up to me to defend myself against it. It's a bit
like being told "We have placed a machine gun pointing into your lounge
window, but it's hidden in a bush, and as long as nobody notices it, you'll
be OK. In case somebody does, however, you can install bullet resistant
glass - but we can't take it away again.

I have been retired for 14 years, and I haven't written a program in that
time (apart from a couple of diddies for personal use), but I used to be a
competent C-language programmer. I was discussing scams with a colleague,
and to demonstrate how they work, I hacked into an account that he had
opened on a supplier site specifically for the demo. That was about 20
years ago, and the whole computing scene has moved along since then, but we
all know that hacks are still done.

Is it impossible that a condition exists whereby a hack is able to skip the
authentication and go straight into an account? I've lost touch with all
computing in general, and I hope it is impossible, but every hack I have
read about has been unexpected - obviously, if it had been expected, it
would have been prevented before it happened. I get the Malwarebytes
Newsletter every week, and the latest edition's first headline is
PayPal users targeted in account profile scam
<>
A sophisticated email scam is targeting PayPal users, using the subject
line of "Set up your account profile."
That's a user manipulation - not a technical hack - but it shows that
hackers are interested in Paypal As computer professionals, you know
better than I that there are still plenty technical hacks about.

I already have strong security. I use a password management program, and
all of my 70+ passwords are long strings of letters, as random as the
target site supports - up to 30 characters of mixed upper & lower-case,
punctuation and special characters (above 0x80 ASCII) There are other
reasons why I don't want to make this too complicated for myself - have a
brain deformity - ADHD - visible on an MRI scan - and there seems no end to
the ways it affects me on a daily basis. I've had it all my life, but it's
getting worse with age (I'll be 80 in a few months). If you are unable to
reset the figure in question down to, say, £500 (still more than I will
ever use), then please give me the name of somebody with the authority and
ability to do so. I'm asking for your help here. The figure that is
currently set, never should have been - but it was - so somebody had access
to it at that time. Can't it be set again - to something reasonable?

Regards,

[papso22]

We are simply other ebay members like you, we can't do anything with either your ebay or PayPal accounts. 

All you can do is make your PayPal account access as secure as possible on all sites where you use it for payment.

[mijewen]

OK, thanks, I'll try to find somebody myself - a board member if I can't
find anybody lower down the ladder.

Regards.

[jckl1957]

The other, really straightforward solution is to close your Paypal account completely and pay for purchases from Ebay and other companies with a debit card.

Paypal used to be a good choice for online purchases when they offered buyers up to 180 days to return a faulty item.  However, they now offer 30 days only, the same as Ebay, and there are lots of ways to pay through Ebay.

All purchases go through Ebay checkout so random sellers have no access to your bankcard details and don't even know how you pay.

So, if you really can't resolve this and it is genuinely causing you to worry, close your Paypal account.