I recently won an eBay auction offered by Kullock of Argentina. I am being asked to use PayPal, but not through the eBay page. The seller wants the payment made to a different email address -- which is not possible to do using the eBay checkout screen. I am able to do this via PayPal independently, however. The seller, Kullock, says they have had problems with this eBay account.

Please, is this safe? Does anyone know? Somehow, this seems wrong to me, and I vaguely remember this seller being mentioned in a previous thread.

Thank you for your assistance.

--Bradley

I've not heard anything bad about this seller, but this is alarming. Might you lose your ebay/paypal protection if things went wrong? This could even be a sign of a hacked account being used to make a fraudulent sale - I remember this happening to a UK pen seller recently. I'd want to know a lot more, and if I had any doubts at all, I'd contact ebay and PayPal and/or cancel.

In fact, I'd suggest that you *do* contact ebay and PayPal immediately, and tell them that there is a possibility this account is being used by a third person who has obtained the password, and ask them to contact the account owner. It probably isn't happening, but it is a real possibility.

Here is the link to Ariel's website Ariel Kullock, there is an email link there. I would suggest contacting him from his website and confirm the information.... that way you know for sure what the story is.
When I made a purchase from Ariel I paid directly from the eBay site like normal.

I have just had the same thing with a different seller, now I'm worried....

I agree with Tom

Thank you all for your replies. Tom, the email I received from the seller was an "eBay" email -- that is, it is in the usual eBay format with one copy going to my messages in "My eBay" and one copy going to my regular hotmail account. I have contacted eBay customer support to find out what they have to say, but I suspect I'll wait a while for a response. I tried doing the same with PayPal, but I simply can't follow their convoluded form to ask even the simplest of questions. I just don't understand why I cannot use the eBay checkout page to make my PayPal payment. Why am I being asked to send payment to another address, and why in euros?

I apologize for this entire topic, as it is so un-pen-related, but you must understand my hesitancy. Thank you again.

--Bradley

I don't bother with all the stuff I receive from eBay. When I have won an auction I just log onto my Paypal account click the link "ITEMS WON EABY and it brings up any auction I have won. It magically finds the auction and I pay right away.

I had my e-bay account hacked last month. A seller, listing under my screen name, sold currently running TV show DVD's. Long story short, on the item listing, it had the DVD coming from Boston, MA USA, while at auctions end, the buyers were requested to make a PayPal payment to a Yahoo e-mail address in Canada. And people didn't question it, won the auction, and paid. That's how I found out about my account being used, people who paid, not getting the goods, and contacting me demanding the DVD or a refund.

Although PayPal is a an e-bay owned division, the e-bay customer service people cannot answer questions regarding PayPal, or do they have access to your PayPal information, for security reasons. You need to go through PayPal.

For a quick response, I suggest you use the live chat feature in both e-bay and PayPals customer service links. An e-mail response can take up to 24-48 hrs

I've read that there is a new phishing scam going on at ebay. Not like the phishing emails but when you are browsing ebay there will be a pop up requestion you to enter your username and password. Because you are on the official ebay website it's easy to fall for it. But this pop up isn't ebay asking but somehow made by scammers.

Your sellers account might have gotten hacked, but also be careful that this doesn't happen to you.

BTW, I third Tom. If you haven't done already, contact the seller trough his website email address.

I use ebay and paypal everyday so I can tell you that for the seller is very easy to register a new email on paypal and ebay too. So it is very strange to use another email not registered with ebay. For him, nothing changes if he receives payment at the ebay address, because the account is the same. I think about a hacker too. Try to contact the ebay seller with the ebay button "contact the seller" to tell him you will pay with ebay address or you will not pay. The coverage of paypal-ebay insurance doesn't function if the address is different, because you are buying out of ebay channels.
And remember that ebay email format can be copied very well with any html based email client.

The folks at e-bay told me one of the most common ways to get into a persons accounts, any account, not just e-bay, is that spam e-mail is opened which contains a worm of some sort which settles into a computer and records key strokes from the user. They are transmitted back to their place of origin and software picks up common traits of user ID's and passwords along with your IP address. I don't even pretend to understand this.

They told me simply, change passwords often, don't have windows store your passwords - type it in every time. And not just e-bay. Your e-mail, bank, etc, and the golden rule we all know....never open mail from an unknown sender and never open an attached file from an unknown sender.

Thanks again for your advice, everyone. I have indeed taken Tom's advice and emailed the seller directly for confirmation.

Netnemo, what you wrote was very interesting, and I agree. It seems to me that the seller would just add their new email to the eBay/PayPal account and that I should not be required to send the seller payment outside of eBay channels.

I will wait until tomorrow for replies, but my bottom line is that I will not make payment outside of eBay channels.

And it was such a beautiful pen!

--Bradley

I'm onlooker... please, tell us the item number....

I won a pen from Kullock a couple of months ago; everything went fine, although it took a while for the pen to get here from Argentina. They don't respond instantly to emails, so wait a day or so. I did pay in USD, not euros.
If you pay with PayPal to a verified account (I think that's the right term), they've got your back, as far as I know; I got burned on a couple of book auctions, and they gave me back my $$.

Joan

I wouldn't agree with this.

First of all, you should be able to accept mail from people who haven't mailed you before - you really might need to be able to do so!

Secondly, if a friend's machine is hit by a worm or virus you might receive a dangerous message from a friendly address - and your machine has to be able to cope with this.

The key is to have a firewall installed on your machine. This will stop all programs except those you have explicitly authorised from communicating with the Internet. (I'd suggest the free personal edition of Kerio Firewall.)

I'd also advise opening mails from sources you are not sure as "plain text" (or in a browser that has both javascript and active-x disabled, if you're techier). A message opened this is way is completely harmless whatever the content. I read my mail via gmail, using a non-Microsoft Browser -hence no Active-X - with Java and Javascript security set so scripts hidden in HTML can only run if they ask and I then give them permission.

You should still exercise caution about opening strange attachments - it's just that now you don't have to rely on recognizing them on sight, a policy about the same as fighting normal crime by saying "I'll phone the police if I see a man in a striped jersey and mask carrying a bag marked swag." The firewall provides a robust way of stopping the damage after an attachment, which might appear to be from a friendly source, has been opened.

Oh - and never, NEVER, use an important password on any publicly accessible PC - eg one in a cybercafe or at a convention or in a hotel (even if it is in your room). It might have a password stealing program installed. That means not just avoiding PayPal, but not using the email account that your PayPal account is linked to, etc. If you need a mail account for travel, have a second account with a quite different name and password for your PayPal, ebay, Amazon, etc.

Eg I'm negotiating with the supplier of a faulty subnotebook (tiny laptop) computer and I just received an email from an address I had never seen before containing what seems like a surrender offer.

Firewalls can be download for free - not having one on your PC is liked not having a lock on your front door!