It takes a lot to ruin my day, and very few people are really able to pull it off, but yesterday someone did manage.

I had some eBay auctions ending yesterday afternoon, and I was sitting at my computer waiting for them to end, fielding any last minute questions from potential buyers. I got a question from someone on one of my more expensive auctions that said "Please confirm me that this is the same item listed here." Then there was a link to another page on what appeared to be one of the non-U.S. eBay sites. Now, I should have looked at the link more closely and seen that it was totally bullshit, but I hadn't even been up for 30 minutes yet, and I wasn't even really started on my first cup of coffee, so I clicked the damn thing.

The link brought me to the eBay login page, which didn't actually alert me at all, because I'm used to this happening. EBay has a tendency to ask you to log in again for no reason at all from time to time, and if you do go to one of the other eBay sites besides the U.S. "ebay.com," you will always be asked to log in again. So, I logged in, expecting to see an auction page, but I got another eBay page instead. With a couple broken images. And the page was called "sent.html." And the site was some generic hosting site.

Fuck. Someone just harvested my eBay ID and password.

Well, I changed my eBay password immediately, and then I went and changed my PayPal password too just in case. I reported the user to eBay, but there's no telling whether or not the guy actually sent the question himself or if the same password fisherman hijacked his account to do it. I responded to the question and told the user that if he hadn't meant to ask me a question that someone hijacked his account.

I was so pissed that I popped up one of my servers in a PuTTY window and started writing a script. Took me about 15 minutes to bang out a script that would hit the server running the harvester page every couple seconds and send "Fuck You" as the username and "You're going down" as the password. I even spoofed the IP in the headers, and then I let it rip. About 45 minutes or so later the server stopped responding. I figure the hosting company saw all the excess traffic and pulled the plug on it or else I really did hit the webserver so hard that I brought it down. Either way, success.

That made me feel a little better, but it didn't make me any less grumpy for the rest of the day. I've seen no evidence that my eBay account has been compromised, but I still feel like a moron for falling for what is essentially one of the oldest tricks in the internet scamming book. I mean the only thing different about this trick and the countless others I've seen like it and not fallen for is that this one was sent as an eBay seller question instead of an email.

The handful of times I've sped past a cop car doing well over the speed limit and then felt my heart jump up into my neck as I hit the brakes is plenty for me. This triggered the same feeling a few seconds after I submitted my ID and password and realized what I'd just done. The difference is that at least I know when I fly past a cop, the cop is just doing their job if they come after me. This jackass, on the other hand, is giving me that feeling when all I've done is let my guard down for a minute. I'm even more pissed because I know there are plenty of eBay users out there who aren't half as savvy as I am about such things.

Sometimes I daydream about meeting someone who does that sort of thing as a way to make money or whatever. I'm dying to meet someone at a coffeeshop who actually tells me that they send spam email messages for a living or that they harvest passwords from people and then attempt to empty their checking accounts. It has been a really really long time since I've been in a fight of any kind, but I do like daydreaming about the scenario where someone tells me they write software that sends thousands of spam messages a day like they're proud of it, and I respond by breaking their nose with a 16oz triple latte mug that's still half full.

what's on:
"Inspection Station" (The Bouncing Souls - The Good, the Bad and the Argyle)