Hello all, I hope I've chosen the correct sub-forum for this post, but if not would you move it for me? I have encountered an interesting situation this past week and I wonder if I could have some advice on what, if anything, can be done about it. It's probably clearest if I just bullet point the facts: I have a computer graphics card for sale on Ebay Tuesday 12th June I received an email from a potential buyer by the name of Dorothy Baynham telling me they wanted to buy the card for their son's birthday and would I end the auction early and sell to them. Wednesday 13th June I agree to end the auction once a PayPal payment is received. Later on Wednesday PayPal payment for £360 is received along with the shipping name and address. Thursday 14th of June I sent the graphics card away by Royal Mail Special Delivery. Friday 15th of June it is received and signed for by a Mr *** Saturday 16th of June I received an email from a gentleman, completely unrelated to either earlier person, asking me why I have claimed £360 from his bank account. Saturday 16th of June I emailed back making clear that payment was sent from his account in payment for the item sold via Ebay. Friday 22nd of June I have received an email from PayPal telling me they are reversing the payment. Sure enough, my PayPal balance is now -£360. My belief is that the person I was corresponding with has used stolen/hacked credentials for a PayPal account to pay for the Ebay item. Subsequently, the person whose PayPal account was compromised has initiated a charge back. There is a lesson to be learned here, which is to never believe what anyone tells you on Ebay and to stick to their rules and let auctions run their course. I understand that, lesson learned, apparently the hard way. My question is, on the basis that I know the address the item was delivered to and I know who signed for it, is it possible for me to issue a Letter Before Action or similar with the aim of bringing them to account? I should make it clear, I am located in Scotland (west coast), the item was delivered to an address in Dudley. I may very well have to simply suck this up and chalk it up to "I should have known better", but I thought I'd check first. Ideally I'd rather not be out of pocket by £360!

Hi I guess my hope from posting this thread is to find out what, if anything, you would do in my circumstances.... I swtiched broadband/phone providers in May 2017. I realised i would lose my 10 year old email address but was ok with this and went about trying to change all online account details which used the old address before the termination date. Then largely forgot about the old account. In December this year my airline loyalty account was hacked. After speaking to the airline they told me that the hacker had entered in my ID number and then used the forgotten password link to have an email sent to reset it. Once they reset the password they used all 100K airline miles up, spending them on e-vouchers. Even though the airline gave me the voucher numbers, an email account for the provider and told me that they hadnt yet been spent - the voucher company refused to cancel them and just copied and pasted their terms and conditions everytime i contacted them. The airline said that they had not been hacked - but my registered email address was the source of the issue. It was then i realised i had not changed the email address from the old cancelled account on this site. If ISP had deleted my email address when i left them it wouldnt have been possible. I did call the ISP and they said very sorry but they're not liable for third party losses and that was after 1 month of consulting their legal team. do i write this off as a very expensive lesson? Or should the ISP have deleted the email account when i left?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/07/tesco-bank-freezes-transactions-online-attack As long as their money has not been stolen !

There is an announcement about this at the top of each forum but if anybody wants to discuss any concerns or flag up any problems that we have not yet become aware of, then please do it here on this thread.

Police are investigating a "significant and sustained cyber-attack" on the TalkTalk website, the UK company says. The phone and broadband provider, which has over four million UK customers, said banking details and personal information could have been accessed. TalkTalk said potentially all customers could be affected but it was too early to know what data had been stolen. The Metropolitan Police said no-one had been arrested over Wednesday's attack but enquiries were ongoing. TalkTalk said in a statement that a criminal investigation had been launched on Thursday. It said there was a chance that some of the following customer data, not all of which was encrypted, had been accessed: Names and addresses Dates of birth Email addresses Telephone numbers TalkTalk account information Credit card and bank details http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34611857

Experian, one of the largest credit agency data brokers in the world, has been hacked. Some 15 million people who used the company’s services, among them customers of cellular company T-Mobile who had applied for Experian credit checks, may have had their private information exposed, the company confirmed on Thursday. Information from the hack includes names, addresses, and social security, driver’s license and passport numbers. The license and passport numbers were in an encrypted field, but Experian said that encryption may also have been compromised. More ... This appears to be US but could it also affect the UK and is the UK servers of Experian any more secure than the US. Clearly, the most important victims here are the T-Mobile users who have had their personal details exposed through no fault of their own, and are potentially running the risk of identity theft.

Smart meters widely used in Spain can be hacked to under-report energy use, security researchers have found. Poorly protected credentials inside the devices could let attackers take control over the gadgets, warn the researchers. The utility that deployed the meters is now improving the devices' security to help protect its network. The discovery comes as one security expert warns some terror groups may attack critical infrastructure systems. Many utility companies are installing smart meters to help customers monitor and manage their power use and help them be more energy efficient. "We took them apart to see how they work," said independent researcher Javier Vidal who, with Alberto Illera, found the flaws in the smart meters. "We suspected there could be some issues with them and we wanted to check. "We feared the security would be easy to break and we confirmed that," he told the BBC. Network nodes BBC

I received an email some weeks ago telling me that my Playstation Network password had been changed, £55 had been topped up on to my online wallet and that £55 had been used to purchase a digital copy of a game from the PSN store. This was quite surprising as at the time I was in the middle of a 12 hour hospital shift and already owned a physical copy of the same game. As no one else has access to my account it seemed pretty clear I’d been hacked, and as I’d logged my debit card on Sony’s site (something I’ll never do again) whoever had got into my account had been able to essentially withdraw funds from my bank account. I immediately contacted my bank to cancel the card, but I was unable to get in touch with Sony until the next day. The customer service rep I initially spoke to seemed confident I’d have the money refunded, so I was reassured. Unfortunately Sony are now refusing to refund the money because the purchase was apparently made via a web browser rather than another Playstation, and as per their terms and conditions I am responsible for the security of my account and so am liable for these purchases. I’ve been a loyal customer of Sony since the early 90s and so I’m pretty disappointed in their response. I don’t feel like they’ve done enough to protect my account, compared to the measures that other online gaming services like Steam have in place, and it seems that they’re willing to snub a longstanding customer for what is to them a relatively paltry sum of money. Can anyone offer any advice on anything I might be able to do, or anywhere I can go for help? Thanks in advance everyone!!

Hi This is new to me so please I really could do with some advise on Ebay account being hacked and pay pal account also. I have reported this to the national fraud office as Ebay would not listen, leaving me and some buyers out of pocket. This is only the start of a whole list of strange things attached to this fraud, so if anybody can help me tell my story of how I find myself with angry people emailing me about items that I have meant to be selling on ebay but the truth is that somebody has stolen my account. Gary

We are getting reports of people receiving spam emails to their email addresses whcih they have used to sign up to the CAG. We are checking but it seems that our email database may have been hacked. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause to you. You should always be very careful when opening emails - and especially be careful about clicking links contained in them. We'll report back here as we find out any more.