Hacked account.

[marksimon3081]

I don't know if anybody out their has any advice or useful information regarding a hacked account. 
My wife's account was hacked in 2022, yeah I know along time ago. It gives you and idea how long we have been fighting this. She first found out when she received a notification regarding non payment from a sale of a games console. She's never had a game's console so she tried to log into her account to see what was going on. No panic at this point. 
She struggled to get in as her password had been altered but she somehow managed to and changed her password and saw details of a games console sale. Panic starting. 
She contacted eBay and the upshot of this contact was her account was suspended pending investigation. 
When she tried to get into her account some days later she couldn't as once again the password had changed. She managed to get in the same way she had before and changed the password again but hours later it had changed again so the hacker was obviously active. Anyway we left it in eBay's hands but heard nothing. 
My wife tried to get access to her account again some time later but this time no matter what she tried she couldn't gain access, she had been locked out. 
She then contacted eBay again but this time she hit a brick wall because the customer advisor required her details so they could access the account. She gave her details, name address and post code, all correct but when she gave her phone number problems started. 
The hacker had left all the details eBay need to contact her, namely email address, account name, postal address, unchanged however they changed the phone number. 
Customer services need the phone number along with all the other information to access the account, now the number has been changed she can't get eBay to do anything. 
She now has had two emails threatening a collection agency to collect the payment eBay made to the hacker. She received the second email a couple of days ago. She has contacted eBay twice and after getting past the useless information on their website got to speak to customer service again but they refuse to help because we can't verify her account because the phone number has been changed. 
EBay's advice via customer service is to wait for the collection agency to contact her and dispute the debt. 
EBay's conduct in all this has been appalling. It's their systems that allowed this to happen and when it does they go missing when account holders turn to them for help. It's seems that they regard account holders a basically dishonest and when things go wrong you are on your own. 
It looks like we are going to have to get legal advice, at our cost, because eBay refuse to step up and take responsibility for their mistake in paying a hacker with no questions asked. 
Any help or advise would be gratefully accepted. 

[tressygirl]

The only help I can offer is to try and get Dublin onto this and not agents in the Philippines,  perhaps you'd receive more joy there ?

Contact them very first thing in the morning when the lines first open at 8 a.m. on weekdays,  there's more chance of Dublin picking up.  Lines do open at 9 a.m. on weekends,  but not sure if Dublin agents work then.  Request the Call Back option , then you'll hear if it's the dulcet tones of Dublin answering.

Horrid siruation to be in, one thing to ask CS though,  is how long do you leave the account which does have to be suspended for investigation,  perhaps trying to access it after a few days locked the account again?  

Best way to contact Customer Services it's a Live Chat, or you can select to speak and request a Call Back. Click is on this link:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/eua?id=5275&mkevt=1&mkpid

On the left sidebar you can see Have us Call you or Chat with Our Automated Assistant.

On weekdays lines open between 8 a.m. and 10 .m.

On weekends they open between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Good Luck !

@marksimon3081 

[marksimon3081]

Hi,

Thank you for taking the time to offer advice. I haven't heard of this, calling at specific times to get a better chance of speaking to someone on this side of the world. I will try this on Monday and see where I get. The intransigence of the customer service advisor was both frustrating and made me very angry as we made it quite clear we needed help but we got nothing. Anyway thank you again. 

[tressygirl]

You're very welcome,  and good luck on Monday, select the Call Back option, then you'll hear if it's the dulcet tones of Dublin answering you.

@marksimon3081 

[hettsville]

By coincidence on the weekly chat this week someone asked for help because their account had been hacked and they were also being threatened with debt collectors.

anita@ebay  replied and supplied a phone number to call 00442086100157.

The reply is post 6 on the chat.https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Chat-with-the-eBay-Community/Weekly-Chat-with-the-eBay-Community-Tea... 

Here's a screenshot of it hopefully there's a chance it may help your wife.

[btr.style]

While I do hope you get it resolved, regarding legal action..... (It's not my view of what's right or wrong, but just the legal aspect of it).

The thing here is whether it was a genuine case of hacking or if someone has voluntarily given their details away for access to be granted. 

Hacking these days doesn't exist like it did. The way hackers worked was to usually brute force hack which basically means someone's correct username was entered and thousands of password combinations were entered to try and get the right password. Back then many people used "password", "password123" or things like that as their password so it would have been easy for any brute force software to break into the account. 

These days there's just so much protection it's nigh on impossible to "hack" into someone's account. Passwords have to be longer, contain upper and lower case letters and special characters. Also entering the password wrong too many times locks the account. 

The only hacking that exists these days is where someone finds a vulnerability in a websites code to either bring the website down altogether or access private/encrypted directory folders (which is where data leaks happen). 

So that means either the details were compromised by entering them on a dodgy site which the criminals saved and have used, this would unfortunately count as voluntarily giving away account details so legally someone is liable for the debt. 

Other than that, someone close to you that knows the details has done it, or there is a 3rd possibility, that there was a data leak on another website and the same username and password was used on eBay. Criminals have then purchased the leaked data and tried the username/password on eBay and managed to get in. You can see if this is the case by going to:

Haveibeenpwned.com 

And entering their email address to see if it's been associated with any data leaks. If it has, that's likely the source of where the details were gained from. This wouldn't put her at fault necessarily in the eyes of the law. 

eBay's actions would be more a gesture of goodwill if they stop chasing the debt for the reasons above with the details being voluntarily given to a scammer (even if they didn't realise the website they entered the details was dodgy) or an unrelated data leak (although if it flags her email address on that haveibeenpwned website, then it could add clout to get them to stop the debt collection). 

[btr.style]

I had something like that happen to me on my eBay account too years ago. 

I hadn't used my eBay account for a while (it wasn't a business back then 10 years ago). Then I had an email come through saying thanks for my purchase of some computer game. The listing was for a digital game code costing around £30. The code is sent via inbox once purchased and to get around eBay's delivery requirements, the seller would send off a sheet of paper with the code written on it in the post. 

Little did I know, there had been a data breach on some other website (I checked on haveibeenpwned), and back then I was a bit relaxed with passwords and used the same one on several websites. So they simply tried my email with the leaked password on eBay and it worked. 

I could still access the account as the scammer didn't change the password. So I changed the password right away to lock them out and contacted eBay support. I pointed it out with the data leak and I can't remember if it was eBay support or PayPal but I definitely got my money back. 

Fingers crossed you get it sorted. 

[papso22]

If I were you I wouldn't go blaming ebay for the hacking, it was unlikely to be their fault and that would just get you off to a bad start when you call.

That doesn't excuse subsequent behaviour though.

[marksimon3081]

Hi. 
Well your reply is certainly comprehensive and thank you. 
I can tell you my wife has not given out any of her details to anyone, she's too aware of what can and has happened. 
The website address you gave was useful. My wife's email address appears on one data breach, I don't know how to use this information as yet but I will look into it. 
As for entering information into a dodgy website, well there is no way of knowing if she has, as you allude to in your reply. 
Once again thank you for taking time to reply. 

[btr.style]

No problem at all. I was just going through the possibilities as sadly some people do enter details onto dodgy sites, especially the ones which looks like the website they were trying to access. I think there's some dodgy DVLA fake sites that do it so people get an email saying they need to update their details, so the click the link and it looks like the DVLA site but is really scammers. Then the details are entered and scammers can do what they like with them. 

The data breach is likely the source of this. Take a screenshot of the info and mention it to support. Hopefully though support will remove the debt. 

[naos-1364]

Hi, this happened to me a few days ago. I literally just now managed to get my  account back. The hackers contacted my phone provider pretended to be me and asked for the provider to change my phone number to a new sim "their phone" all notifications goes to them and nothing to me. I cant make calls out, texts our nor can not receive any calls other than via whatsapp.

This is how I got my account back. When they ask for verification to the phone number I clicked on "I have a new number" inserted my husbands number and they then asked me to verify my identity which I did with my passport and a photo of myself. Verification went through and I got in! I quickly changed the email address to my new email and the phone number was still my husbands so there is no way they can get in now. I'm sorry to hear how you and your wife been trying to recover her account and I hope if you havent yet you can try these steps to see if you get any luck.

Wishing you all the best!