Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Paypal account hacked?

I've had a lot of mysterious emails showing up in my gmail account.

The first came from Element 5 customer service. It read that my paypal transaction for some product of theirs had failed.

The second came from Stardock Support Services. The email thanked me for signing up with them and making an account. It contained a link for me to click to confirm my account with them.

After seeing the first email, I quickly went to PayPal to change my password. I saw that I had been charged 49.95 by Stardock, and that no record of my purchasing anything from Element 5 could be found (though it led me to PayPal which is a really good thing). Oddly enough, when I went to paypal, it told me that i had been randomly selected for an account detail update. This isn't really that strange since I hadn't been to PayPal in a few months but it WAS strange since it means PayPal might have some idea of how somebody got a hold of my PayPal account information.

I changed my passwords for PayPal and any account with a similar password. I sent an email to PayPal requesting that I be contacted and my transaction cancelled. I sent an email to Stardock after logging in telling them of the situation and asking if there was anything they needed to do to ensure that the erroneous purchase be cancelled.

The most unsettling part of my reparations was in the next thing I did. I logged into the Element 5 account I now have and went to change the password set with them. I was able to reset my password with them without knowing the current one because this account was tied to my email for whatever reason. When I went to change my password with them I noticed that my proper address at home was registered with my account as my billing and mailing addresses. I then filled these fields with random characters.

For what it's worth, it seems that my account with Stardock was used to try to purchase a video game, namely, DEMIGOD, which is a game I've been hearing about.

The password reset email from element 5 told me what the product I tried to get from them was. Something called:

Product: 300324150 Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 - 3 licenses (1 year)

That is definitely not something I would buy... nor something that I would expect someone else to buy with hacked accounts really.

I have received confirmations from Stardock saying that they have one, received my service request, and two, that my request has been assigned to a representative who I should look for an email from soon.

I suppose I should be super creeped out but I'm not terribly. I think it is because the damage done should be able to be rolled back and doesn't require the cancellation of credit cards or anything. I hope to hear back from Paypal soon.

1 comment:

  1. What is the end of the history? I have received 3 messages from stardock buying "The Sims 3".

    WTF!!!

    ReplyDelete