I created my eBay account about nine years ago.  Initially it was to buy the occasional item for personal use but I soon discovered it was useful for my antiques business in terms of acquiring items needed.

One of the first mistakes I made when I signed up to eBay and PayPal was using the same password that I used for EVERYTHING else!  It seems ludicrous now that I should have done that but I was completely unaware of Internet security procedures. 

Of course the next thing that happened is my eBay account got hacked and the hacker had access to my email account, my PayPal account and everything else that was linked to the eBay account. 

The first I knew about the hacking was a phone call from eBay asking if I knew my account had been hacked.  I had no idea although I had not been able to get into my account for a day or so.  eBay were very quick off the mark in resolving the issue.  The first question the caller asked me was ‘do you use the same password for everything?’  Of course my answer was ‘yes’ and he went on to explain why I should not do that.  I have never done it since!  I was one of the lucky ones.  All I lost were a few emails from contacts that the hacker had redirected to their own email.

Although this experience really tainted my view of the Internet as a whole I have since overcome those reservations but am now much more cautious about the whole thing.

If you are new to the Internet please do learn from this mistake – it could have been costly, as could the mistakes I will outline in the following posts!

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