I hesitated in making a post to the list about my recent eBay fraud experience but now that the topic has been raised, I should probably chime in too. Shortly after I returned home from my first visit to Le Cirque (which was even better than I had imagined) my eBay account was hijacked and used to post about a hundred of those 24 hour auctions for bicycles, stereo equipment et al. I caught on shortly and, via eBay's chat feature, had eBay shut them down. The perpetrator had transferred $1000 into my account to pay for listings, then retrieved the money, transferred the fees to my account, added credit cards, changed the email address, etc. Even with a new, secure and impossible to guess password, I found that the fiend was able to take actions that generated new and ominous warnings from eBay about the use of credit cards, etc. I had to spend another 3 hours chatting with various service reps, none of whom could do anything except send me on a wild goose chase to another chat. I ended up canceling my account with eBay, pedal-professor, along with its feedback record of 768 transactions with only one, undeserved negative. I also canceled my PayPal account and the credit card associated with my purchases. This seemed like the only prudent thing to do, since no one at eBay could tell me much about what happened and I didn't want to risk more serious problems.
I don't think the problem was eSnipe, which I've used for a few years, but I would be interested to see if there is any common denominator between those of us who have been victimized. It's almost certainly not a virus or worm or Spyware in my case, since my computers checked out clean before and after the incident. It's also unlikely that I fell victim to phishing, since I ignore all such messages, dozens every day, and only look at eBay emails viewable via their own web site. There is however one careless thing I did on the trip to Le Cirque; I brought along a laptop computer and used it to check some eBay auctions. The wireless networks at The Battleground Inn and another place I stayed were not secure and someone could have stolen my eBay password by monitoring the wireless signal. I knew that I was taking a risk but I did find out that I won, using eSnipe, a set of four NOS Campy NR/SR brake pads for about $14! I didn't win the Richard Sachs bike that was being auctioned at the time. I console myself by thinking of all the money I saved.
In any case, I've sworn off eBay for the foreseeable future, which means I won't be doing any more collecting except for things that are posted for sale directly on this list. Fortunately I have enough frames and parts to keep me busy for quite some time. This does mean that I probably won't be picking up a fixed gear any time soon (but I want to thank John T. Pergolizzi for the short fixed gear ride in The Battleground Inn parking lot). In fact, without eBay in my life, I should now have a lot more time for actual riding!
I had planned to start selling off a lot of components that are excess to my needs, offering them first to the list before sending them to eBay. Now I might hold off and offer them to the list next spring for delivery at the next Cirque - we've got our reservation! (Thanks, Dale and the others who put these events together.)
By the way, if you want to see my current collection of bikes, I've got some
poor pictures posted at http://users.adelphia.net/
Regards,
Gary Chottiner, Northeast Ohio