What are Hijacked Accounts?
Hijacked eBay accounts are accounts that have been deceitfully taken from their rightful owners. A few posts back, I showed a few ways whereby the "less-than-honest" people can get some reputation, or positive feedback. Hijacking other users' accounts are just an extreme way of doing that. In some places, hijacking can be known as hacking.
Hijacked eBay accounts are accounts that have been deceitfully taken from their rightful owners. A few posts back, I showed a few ways whereby the "less-than-honest" people can get some reputation, or positive feedback. Hijacking other users' accounts are just an extreme way of doing that. In some places, hijacking can be known as hacking.
How do you avoid being scammed by Hijacked Accounts?
It's not easy to detect hijacked accounts, because they were legit once. However, just because they are difficult to detect, does not mean it is impossible. There are some signs to determine if the account is hijacked or not.
- The seller tries to make you contact them via an external e-mail address.
- The seller is selling items of a totally different nature from the ones sold before this. It's possible to check using eBay's history function.
Some things that can be done to minimize risk are:
- Try not to trade using wire-transfer, money order, or personal cheque. Using this is like using money. These methods offer no protection to the buyer. Companies like PayPal, though not foolproof, is a much safer bet. Make an account there and use it for all your transactions.
- Check the bidders of the sale, if any. See if they have any other bids, or if they keep bidding on each other's items, but never buy them. Some fraudulent buyers use multiple accounts to make their bid look more appealing, and to raise the price.
By taking these simple precautionary measures, one can minimize the risk involved in trading online.
