Email Poltergeist - eBay Invasion

When I checked my gmail account yesterday morning I knew immediately that something was drastically wrong... there were 378 unread messages. What? Shit!? Scrolling through them I quickly decided to report 90% as spam... a bunch from Word Press but a whole host of others that were all quite pleasant and excited to hear from me! What do you know! Apparently someone or some random bot program was using my email address to sign up for all sorts of free information, newsletter subscriptions, and on and on... That's odd!

So... just an aside... I googled "hijacked my email" and got lots of articles returned regarding what to do if your email address list is hijacked and everyone in your contact list starts to receive SPAM. This is not what happened. At least no one that I know has received emails from me... SO... I'm not sure what the term is for what's happened/ing to me. I quickly did select all check box and hit the spam button until I was down to one page of actual emails.

I continued to receive excited congratulation messages from all sorts of sites throughout the day and began unsubscribing and sending little notes along to the people explaining what was happening. They are all people behind these sites after all. Somewhere at some point someone created that contact me or subscribe here spot for a reason, right?

Maybe this is the beginning of a new cyber etiquette conversation. In the face of adversity and upset, just be kind and don't blame people who really are also unwitting victims of the same program.  Right?

At the same time and perhaps connected and perhaps not... (who knows, really, who cares). As I zeroed in on the legitimate emails in my box I noticed three messages from eBay 1: you changed your password didn't you?... and 2: so happy that I purchased a Macbook... ME? a Macbook?  I don't think so!  TWO of them actually. Well FUCK! This is a different sort of digital trespass . So I commenced calling... eBay, PayPal and Chase. With relative calm and composure I explained to each there was a BREECH of security.

• eBAY was first... (**PostNote** they did NOT cancel the Macbook order!?? Really!!  I had to do that separately, silly me... by the time I realized that the shit had shipped! Fuck!), the woman had an English accent... cool, very nice she said everything would be reversed and set back to before the "hack" at 7:21 am. She encouraged me to contact PayPal just in case... "no need, I said, I don't EVER use my PayPal account." More later on that... She also said I would get an email asking me to change my password again...in about 10 minutes. (**PostNote** I never got that email and I went into my eBay account and changed my own password and then closed the account)
• This line of thinking got me changing my password on everything I could think of especially my email and bank accounts. During this process I noticed the two charges from PAY PAL on my Chase visa account. What the Fuck! Two charges for $2,399... Macbook related. So... I called them and connected to the Fraud department and now that account is closed.
• So... since PayPal was involved I took a queque from my earlier experience and went online myself and changed the password and deleted the account. THEN I called their customer service. Again an English accented woman was very nice and made sure I knew that the credit card number was used to update the PayPal account... so THAT is what the hacker's hacked, not my eBay or PayPal account. Really? Who the Fuck knows... or cares at this point.

Making a short-ish story longer? Bottom line? I choose to approach the entire situation with Wonder I realized amongst all the crazy subscriptions, to which I now unwillingly subscribe, some of them are pretty damn cool! I never would have found them had it not been for this odd email poltergeist. Living in Wonder... is way more fun! 

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