Challenges when selling online: Hackers and PayPal reserve

Hi!

I am in the online selling business for over a year now and I have read and watched all kinds of information about drop-shipping but not even once I heard about what is happening to me right now. Recently a hacker took over my whole store, it happened when I was online and working, that is the good part because if they catch you offline for couple of days and you are gone. So I am fortunate I was online at the time of the hacker attack. I received a message saying that I've changed my registered country from the UK to China(in eBay) and a second one saying that I've also changed my registered email (which means this is the last message to me). That is the first bad thing that happened recently. The second very bad thing which I have never heard anyone talk about is a second PayPal Jail! They do not call it PayPal jail (they call it reserve) but this is what it is. This is happening because I am dropshipping and do not have any stock so it could happen to anyone which starts making some profits. That reserve is holding 25% of every sale for 2 months and that lasts 6 months, absolutely ridiculous. I wrote many emails, sent all the information they need, spoke with them on the phone but they would not lift the reserve. The only thing I managed to do is to lower it to 20% and 45 holding days, still not acceptable! So good luck to you all.

Antoni

Hi Antonia, pretty scary hacker story,

I had my old eBay account hacked, but not taken over completely like yours. I was only made aware of the issue when I stated receiving emails about World Cup football tickets I had up for auction, which was news for me as I never had such a thing.

First email I dismissed as a joke, then when I checked my inbox next I had about 10 emails regarding the same. So I logged into eBay and sure enough, found the listing for World Cup tickets on my account. Of course the hacker had asked people in the listing to email them direct, not through eBay, but thankfully many were ignoring that request and using eBay which in turn then alerted me.

So thankfully we could rectify that hack quickly and effectively, but it does highlight the issues that are around and as per both our experience, need to have a careful eye kept on them.

Wow, is there any way around this hacking?

Good solid passwords are about it and protecting the password as well, along with changing them at regular intervals is a good idea.