March 29, 2024

This is how you can protect yourself

This is how you can protect yourself

eBay Classifieds

Scammers are currently hacking eBay classifieds user accounts. To protect yourself, your access password should be as secure as possible. Photo: Katherine Weibel / dpa-tmn

(Photo: dpa)

But there are ways to protect your accounts from these takeovers. Federal Office for Information Security Ebay classifieds admit that the number of inquiries users complain about account takeovers has increased by 250 percent in a year. In the past few months, nearly half of all inquiries to customer service have revolved around this topic.

Scammers often only need a user’s email address to abuse someone else’s online account. If you know this, just crack the associated password – this is also the case with Ebay classifieds. The scammers then use third-party accounts to deliver goods they don’t own or simply don’t send. This harms the third parties who pay for the products up front.

Strong passwords provide better protection

But there are ways to protect your accounts from these takeovers. The Federal Bureau of Information Security (BSI) recommends using strong passwords of at least eight characters. The following applies: Use all character classes, i.e. uppercase and lowercase letters as well as numbers and special characters.

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When creating and memorizing hard-to-crack chatter, mnemonics are useful for creating a password from the first letters of words as well as the numbers and letters they contain. Example: The sentence “I have an apartment with three rooms and a balcony” results in the string “IheWm3Z & eB.”

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If you don’t want to constantly come up with secure passwords or if you can’t or don’t want to keep them all, you can use a password manager. Programs and applications automatically generate and save strong passwords for any number of accounts. Here you just have to remember a master password to access it.