How to delete a fake account tied to my email address?

[marnemece_0]

Someone created a new ebay account and tied it to one of my email addresses (not the one tied to this account). I did manage to secure the account with a strong password, so the perp is locked out, but I have a problem.

I want to delete the "fake" account now, and ebay will not let me proceed through the account deletion process until I enter a confirmed address and mobile number for the fake account. I'm not going to expose my address and phone number simply to delete an account I did not sign up for.

How can I go about removing the fake account, if not through the automated site workflow?

[rfmtm]

Hard to understand how this happens, if the other person can't access your email address to get emails from ebay.  However, this apparently does occur.

@eburtonlab  @shipscript  Can either of you help here?

[eburtonlab]

I have never actually closed an eBay account, so I have no direct experience to draw on.

I am assuming you have already made sure that there is no other valid email or phone number or link to social media that the creator could potentially use get back into the account via a password reset.

I wonder if it might be worth changing the account name -- just to make it that much harder for the creator to try to recover it. On the other hand, that might free up the old username in 30 days or so to allow the creator to claim once again. Deleting the account might have the same effect.

Keeping the account as is might be the best option.

Otherwise you may have to contact eBay to see if the account can be deleted by customer service.

[shipscript]

@marnemece_0 

Usually what happens in situations like this is that the person who created the account mistyped their own email address. This is a surprisingly frequent problem, particularly with gmail and similar popular mail services. (It could also be an attempt by a scammer to create an anonymous account using a random email.)

Once you have changed the password, all active connections accessing that account are disconnected. And the other person does not have email access to change the password back, so they are essentially locked out. If you also change the recovery phone number, the account is now securely yours.

I would recommend going through the account to see if there were any purchases or sales made on that account. I suspect there won't be if registration was incomplete, but if there did happen to be transactions, then I would contact customer support to deal with those transactions. If there are no transactions, then you could view and revise ALL of the contact information and save the new account as your own.

If you don't want to keep the account, then simply fill in the required information so that you can proceed with closing the account. Remember, once you change the password, all other sessions are closed, and the only way to get back in is through an email or recovery phone number (the phone number that you are going to add or change).

[marnemece_0]

I know that sometimes accounts are created to provide a wedge to hack other parts of a person's social media circle, so when I got the notification that this one was active, I performed a force password reset on it and took it over just to lock out the hacker.

The hacker isn't the issue. I use extremely strong and unique passwords for all of my accounts, so them having created one or claimed a username is not my issue. They only engaged this one email address of mine, which is also very secure/locked down.

My issue is that I already have an ebay account (this one) and I don't want a second one. I also - out of abundance of caution - don't want to provide my contact information to the automated process that deletes accounts. 

The secondary issue is that ebay marketing bots are super-spamming the email address for the fake account, which is super annoying.

I think I'm stuck having to contact customer support on this. Recommendations on best way to get a human engaged? Email? Phone?

[eburtonlab]

Remember, once you change the password, all other sessions are closed, and the only way to get back in is through an email or recovery phone number (the phone number that you are going to add or change).

Or a linked social media account -- an Apple, Facebook or Google account could be used to get into the account even with a changed password. If any social media accounts are still linked, unlink them.

[eburtonlab]

I think I'm stuck having to contact customer support on this. Recommendations on best way to get a human engaged?

Getting a call back from a customer service rep is probably the easiest way to get in touch with eBay, but front line customer service may not necessarily be able to help if the issue is not in the standard script.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/How-do-I-contact-Customer-Support/m-p/32016431#M1783851

You may be better off contacting eBay through social media:

https://twitter.com/askebay

https://www.facebook.com/eBay/

[marnemece_0]

Thank you for the pointers on this. I followed the workflow you linked and got onto the phone with ebay support in less than 5 minutes. They have canceled the fake account.

Again, thanks.

[rebuch-28]

What number did you use to get to customer service?  You didn't indicate that.  I'm a first time user and quite frankly this is truly frustrating and 'LIVE' hands off by Ebay is humiliating to say the least.  That's simply awful for a company and business!!!

[eburtonlab]

@rebuch-28 

See message number seven for details of getting a call back from eBay.

[rebuch-28]

Thank you eburtonlab.