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A warning through buying through Ebay or Kijiji


Halifornia

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I just want to give a brief warning to anyone buying through ebay or Kijiji,

Last night I was dealing with someone to get an edge 1.0 jersey for 75$(Pretty good deal), and we started ironing out details on shipping and etc, but this to me is when things started getting strange after he wanted to know the postal code of where its being shipped to.

When I made an offer to him about shipping and price of the jersey this is what he sent:

I'm in no rush.  However I believe $75 for the jersey is very fair.  As you might imagine, I have taken steps to verify your identity.  Is (My mothers name insert here)your mother?  

So some how this guy managed to find out through my postal code, my mothers identity even though I made no mention of her what so ever, please be careful on who you deal with because this is pretty scary stuff and someone could use that for other means, make you you spread the word on this because I find that creepy and quite literally scary if someone has that information and even more coming from that.

Thanks for hearing me out.

- Hali

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Wow that is scary. Ive received racist comments from a deal gone bad through my zip code on ebay.

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Halifornia, did you mention your name anywhere in the messages to the seller? If you did, all it takes is a few seconds to do an internet search, and someone can find out your relatives' names, places you've lived, places you've worked, your address, how much you paid for your home, lots of stuff. The fact that the seller knows something may have nothing to do with eBay or Kijiji.

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Not one bit. its very strange, but his name and contact number are on the ad.

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Just your email address can sometimes be enough to find out everything about you, if you gave him any info once so ever he could more than likely figure all that stuff out. It's amazing what you can find with so little information these days. Just a phone number search can turn up your life story. That is pretty creepy though no doubt about it.

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Not one bit. its very strange, but his name and contact number are on the ad.

Well, then that IS strange. Sorry if it sounds like I'm beating a dead horse, but you're sure you don't have a personally identifiable handle on your outgoing e-mails?

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Im sure, I called it off because it seemed crazy for a full customized Edge jersey to be worth 75$.

I mean like this......you don't even need to have any info in your email. All he needs is your email haha.

http://www.spokeo.com/email-search

Makes sense.

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Way too much information out there, for sure, but why would he mention your mom? Weird.

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What a creep. Even if you are a crazy stalker like that guy, and you look someone up like that, why would you tell the person what you did? I mean really, does knowing someone's mother's name really verify their identity?

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Comes off as a bit much to say that, so I could see why it would be off putting.

But ultimately, depending on what you've put out there, or in some cases what you haven't, anybody can find out anything they want about you with very little information.

Your e-mail handle can usually bring up information. If it is attached to a forum account, they could look up your forum handle if it is different from the e-mail handle, it will then lead to other forums where you post on the same handle, etc, until they have a trail that leads to your real name, from your real name they can usually find out basic info from sites like Spokeo. Even something innocent like "Hey, can you e-mail me @ "your e-mail" with some pictures of this jersey" posted on a forum will show up in google.

If you sign up to web forums with your personal e-mail and use the same handle every where, someone who wanted to could probably find your entire post history on the internet so long as the forums were still active and running.

In the end, I can see how that would make someone uneasy. But ultimately, any time you do a transaction, whether through here, eBay, or other classified sites, once the person has that personal information (e-mail, or name, or phone number, or address, or even eBay handle), if they want to look you up, whether because they are creepy, or just because they are sketched out by something you said and want to make sure you have an actual presence on the internet to make them feel more assured that you aren't pulling a charge back scam on them, it's very easy for them to do. It's just the world we live in.

I don't think it's creepy to look someone's handle or name up if there are a lot of small red flags (let's take the guy who sold the jersey to the 0 feedback bidder in the eBay thread in the NHL section as an example). When I sell something to somebody, I have zero interest in googling them to read their crappy blog post from 2003 about why high school is hard, but if they are a zero feedback bidder, or there are lots of red flags, it's useful to look them up to see they have a Facebook or Twitter or anything that can assure you that they are a real person who would be accountable and easy to contact if they intended to rip you off.

........The guy in the eBay thread got screwed over by UPS.......but that's another story.

With that said, it's both creepy and socially awkward to outright imply to someone in what can be perceived as a threatening manner that you know "sensitive" information about them. It's not like after googling them, I'm going to send a zero feedback bidder an image of their house from google street view with the subject line "Tread Lightly" and a youtube link to the Breaking Bad theme song so that they can play it over the e-mail for dramatic effect and know not to rip me off.

Edited by hockeyjerseyssuck
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  • 2 weeks later...

I mean like this......you don't even need to have any info in your email. All he needs is your email haha.

http://www.spokeo.com/email-search

scary stuff.........btw, i just serched a email i use, and someone else popped up........so just how reliable is this..........aren´t spokeo just trying to sell something ?

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They are semi accurate but as you found out not 100%, I think they mostly work off of comparing that email to social media sites registered under that email but I could be wrong. There are other services like that though. I studied criminal justice and took several private investigation classes, it is actually quite funny because a lot of private detectives use engines like spokeo to get info clients want and then charge WAY more for it than if the client had just looked it up themselves. It is kinda scary to think but a lot of stuff police and private investigators use open to the public if they want to pay the monthly fee charged by places like spokeo to use their engines. But anyway I'll end my rant haha, it's just safe to assume anyone can find private info on you if they try hard enough.

And just double checked and my email comes up as me on there so yea it's accurate enough haha :P

Edited by FuzzyPenguin
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The shocking part isn't that the guy was able to find out information about you online, but that he chose to use the information in that manner.

Like HJS mentioned, I too routinely research people I do deals with on eBay. Most times it's someone sending me a low offer on eBay and if I can find their e-mail via Google without much trouble, I'll send them a direct e-mail offering to sell the item outside of eBay so they can reap the benefits of me not paying fees. I offer to invoice them through PayPal so they have a record of what they bought etc.

The trick is just not being creepy about it. If I'm not 100% certain it's the right person, I go with the "sorry to bother you, are you the person I talked to on eBay" route and I will usually be honest how I got their email address (Facebook, Google +, Twitter etc). I've done this maybe ten times and not once has the person been offended and I want to say all of them ended up doing a deal with me outside of eBay. A few have done multiple deals, just contacting me directly if they seem me list something else they are interested in.

What was funny for me was the first two times I tried this, both individuals ended up being in law enforcement (a fact I discovered during my "research") but I contacted them anyway. Both were actually glad I contacted them directly to save them some money.

Edited by akteon
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