Someone has hacked into my Ebay account and therefore my Paypal account Please help

[bambisoloved]

Can anybody give me some advice urgently

Someone has hacked into my Ebay account and therefore has access to my Paypal account. I started getting refused payment emails from Paypal for 4 items on the 3rd of June. Paypal have paid it and I have a £50 debit they say I have to pay. I have not bought any of these items and have informed Paypal this. I first contacted Ebay via live online support and they said contact Paypal. I am confused as to who should sort this out. I looked on my Paypal account yesterday and found that more items have been bought.
I went onto both branches of the two banks I use for Ebay and explained the situation. One has said they will wave the unorthorised overdraft penalty £15 for all the items I have not bought I dont have any regular money go in this account. The other account I get my pension go in on regularly so I have informed them of the situation and cancelled all direct debits except one - sky. I have changed my Paypal password.
Is their anything else I should be doing. Should I report it to the police ? I am not computer literate so should I get an computer expert in to make my computer safe or use something you can buy ?

bambisoloved

[Stevlynd]

Re: Someone has hacked into my Ebay account and therefore my Paypal account Please he

Hi Bambisoloved, I am no expert in this matter but I would definitely advise you to contact the police and report this matter. I would also recontact both eBay & paypal to get more information, i.e find out what these goods are and where these goods were shipped to. You should probably also close both bank accounts where this money comes from.
Hopefully someone with more expertise will come along.

[Eloise01]

Re: Someone has hacked into my Ebay account and therefore my Paypal account Please he

Not a lot more expertise I'm afraid, but this shouldn't be possible because there should be two different passwords - one for eBay and one for PayPal. It sounds to me like you may have a Trojan - something that has hacked the information on your computer. In which case, it is probable that nothing is secure on your computer. You need to talk to the police (who won't be able to do much about it - but you need a crime number) and to Paypal. And you need to speak to someone more computer savvy about your computers security - it may not now be as simple as shutting the barn door after someone has already got the horse. Unfortunately, if you have not secured your computer from this sort of attack, Paypal may not be liable - at the very least you may have to prove that the access could not have been through your own fault in having an insecure computer. Similar to the fact that if your house is burgled, the insurance company would require you to have locked the doors and windows ....

[labman]

Re: Someone has hacked into my Ebay account and therefore my Paypal account Please he

I was under the impression with Paypal that it is not the bank account per se attached to EBay, but the card and card details. As long as you cancel the card and get a new one issued, you should have no need to cancel your bank account.

As regards the computer, it's worth £40 down your local computer shop to get it cleaned of everything. It would be easy enough to tell you how to do it, but at what price peace of mind?

[Lucifa42]

Re: Someone has hacked into my Ebay account and therefore my Paypal account Please he

I would also suggest, to everyone!, to enable the 2-step authentication on Paypal if you have a mobile phone.

What this means is not only will you need your password to login to your paypal, you also need a code that will be sent to your mobile phone. It will be impossible for someone knowing your password to access your account without also having your mobile.

It may also be that your computer is safe, though you should get it checked out any way.

Passwords can be guessed, especially if they are simple. There are hundreds of lists around the internet that contain the most commonly used passwords and people will run this list over multiple paypal logins until they get a success.
How complex is your password? Is it the name of your cat? Is it a dictionary word? Is it your birthday? All these will be quickly guessed.
Make it difficult, use a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters (such as #!&£$) and try to make it at least 8 characters long.
If you struggle to remember complex passwords there are password manager programs around to help you, they will generate very complex passwords for you and record them - all you need is do is remember 1 complex password to access the program.

Personally I use Lastpass as it all integrates into my browser and has a similar 2 step authentication to the paypal mobile, but there are others such as 1password and keepass.

[samsmoot]

Re: Someone has hacked into my Ebay account and therefore my Paypal account Please he

I would reinstall Windows to be sure of a clean sweep - after backing up the important stuff, that is. Plus get a good anti-virus and firewall installed. If there's no teenager about who can do this, then a trustwothy PC shop can set you up. Your Pc also might have a reset option, ie to get it back to factory settings - that would be easier and quicker.

I hear some people even allow copies of some software to be downloaded for free - and it covers a very wide field. Or have a look on ebay for what you need. Windows 7 should be pretty obtainable.