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  #1  
Old 03-24-2008
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Unhappy Starting all over from scratch...

I just had every one of my seller accounts linked through Paypal and suspended. 14 of them. One went down and then the others went down within several days. Then a day later, 8 of my wife's accounts went down. Only common link was Paypal. All were started based on the advice here.

I never linked any of them. Most were over a year old. I am extremely careful about my accounts, so I know it wasn't cookies, beacons or email shenanigans. They nailed them through Paypal.

I know you say not to use Paypal anymore, but if you don't and they don't let you start a new account (0 feedbacks) with a merchant account, what would you do? I read over Aspkin's latest, but I fail to see an alternative where you could open a new EBAY account and combined Paypal account and not end up limited on Paypal in a very short time or linked to EBAY and suspended.

In my old accounts, I had my real address in Paypal, but my "virtual" address(es) in EBAY. Worked great, for a year. Several of my accounts had hundreds of feedbacks. One even got power seller status!! They linked them all and now they are all gone and I have to start over.

All my buyer accounts that are not Paypal based were untouched. On your website, you say they are linking always now.

But Aspkin just said today to use Paypal if you don't sell too much.

So, can I use Paypal or can't I? Do I have to discard my old Paypal accounts and start anew? And how do I keep from getting linked? Geesh, this is getting harder.

I apologize if this overlaps a couple of other threads. But I need to start over , so figured this would be a good thread for folks that just got wiped out by EBAY suspensions.
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Old 03-24-2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ebayaintstupid View Post
Only common link was Paypal.

I never linked any of them.
So you used the same Paypal for all these or separate PP's?

They link automatically you don't have to manually link them...as soon as you list something the PP email address you use in eb links you to that PP..

As far as all your accounts going down it was either the IP or the cookies...unless you were using one PP for all of them which has never been recommended...

Its not safe to use Paypal at all...they will limit your account if its new, there's no avoiding it...its best to open a PP using the exact same info as ebay w/ a savings account and gift card so you can list, get it verified but never use it, invoice your buyers with a merchant account...
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Old 03-24-2008
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Unhappy It wasn't IP or Cookies...

I use dial-up only or occasionally AOL. No chance it was IP. And I use Firefox with the delete private data set religiously. No chance it was cookies. Period.

If it were IP Address, how would ALL get linked simultaneously? One or two I could believe we screwed up on, not all fourteen at once.

All the accounts were spread over two paypal accounts. One I had moved from one paypal account to another, so I am suspecting that is how they made the connection between the two different accounts.

It was recommended here when I started following the forum, about a year ago, to use the alias emails in your paypal account, and just be sure not to use the primary Paypal email address on EBAY. I never did the latter. But if I had 14 accounts with separate Paypal accounts with 14 different bank accounts. That gets kind of crazy to manage.

I see you saying that I should bill using a merchant account, but what if someone reports that you did that to EBAY? I mean, Google Checkout is forbidden, so if I sold something and billed them through GCO, and one customer complained, wouldn't I get suspended?
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Old 03-24-2008
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yeah personally i never use more than 1 ebay account with each paypal i have. Youre actually better off opening up 14 paypal accounts in my opinion. Once it happens they are of course going to link all those ebay accounts, then will look into who you have paid and realize somethings not right.
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Do you use a cleaning program like Ccleaner? Because just clearing private data and cleaning cookies from Firefox isn't enough...
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Old 03-24-2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ebayaintstupid View Post
It was recommended here when I started following the forum, about a year ago, to use the alias emails in your paypal account, and just be sure not to use the primary Paypal email address on EBAY. I never did the latter. But if I had 14 accounts with separate Paypal accounts with 14 different bank accounts. That gets kind of crazy to manage.
Yeah this is outdated and doesn't work...you have to have 14 separate ebay, paypal, and banks...ING lets you have like 13 savings accounts or something like that..
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Old 03-24-2008
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Unhappy It may have been outdated, but it...

worked until end of last week. Sigh. I wouldn't care, but my wife is so upset. She got suspended because of me in the first place. Stubborn me trying to use Google Checkout before I even knew what an EBAY suspension was.

Now, she gets to start all over too. :-(

If I change the primary email and bank account on the paypal account I have, can I reuse it without getting a new seller's account suspended? Or do i have to always open new Paypal accounts? I would think it wouldn't matter seeing as I would have to use the correct mailing address with Paypal anyway or when they verify me I am toast.

I would like to find the definitive link that nailed all the accounts. Paypal is the only one I can come up with because I have half a dozen accounts that were never in these paypal accounts and all survived. But even ones I hadn't used (but were in those Paypal accounts) got nailed.

All got FPA NOTICE B001: eBay Registration Suspension - User Agreement - Abusing eBay.

Why would it matter what bank account and routing number I give Paypal by the way? Are you telling me that Paypal gives your routing information to EBAY giving them direct access to your bank account? I would think that illegal.

I think it much simpler. I think Paypal just gives them all the emails for that account on request. So, if they have any complaint or any suspicious activity at all on the account, they just ask Paypal and kaboom, any email in that account is gone, especially if they can link it to any prior suspended account.

All that said, please answer the questions if you can. I don't care anymore why I was suspended (other than to avoid it in the future), but how to open a new account that will last and be usable going forward with the least amount of grief.

Thanks to you all. You are great to help.
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Old 03-24-2008
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Red face No I don't use ccleaner...

Aspkin does not say that cleaning out your private data using Firefox is not enough. In fact, you are the first to mention it.

I checked ccleaner and it didn't look like it did much special. Just a basic cleaning tool.

I did have suspicions about AOL because they are a partner of EBAY that maybe they could forward information, such as your AOL login, to EBAY and they could link you that way.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ebayaintstupid View Post
If I change the primary email and bank account on the paypal account I have, can I reuse it without getting a new seller's account suspended? Or do i have to always open new Paypal accounts?

Why would it matter what bank account and routing number I give Paypal by the way?
In my experience the linking stopped once I started using Ccleaner in Dec..I used to just clear my private data, cookies, history etc from Firefox...

The thing is Paypal keeps all your previous info even if you delete it. Name, emails, addresses, bank accounts, all of it is in their system...If you re-use anything thats linked to a suspended account they get you...so it matters if you give them an email or bank account previously used...

Avoiding the link-Make a new Paypal
Avoiding Limitaion on New Paypal-Providing SS#
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  #10  
Old 03-24-2008
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Ccleaner is just another tool, but it could help you out. I never had to use it though, just make sure your cookies are gone and your ip is changed before starting over and you should be okay.
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  #11  
Old 03-24-2008
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Unhappy Well, I never used the same IP Address...

and my cookies were always cleaned. And everything worked dandy for over a year. Then kaboom, all of them went down within several days.

If it were cookies, why would we screw up on all fourteen accounts on the same three days (including many we hadn't even used in months)?

And if it were IP Address, why again did that not come to light at EBAY until those fateful three days last week.

And if it were either, why did all fourteen accounts come down, but newer accounts never placed in those paypal accounts were left alone.

And if it was because I wasn't using ccleaner, well, I wasn't using it for over a year and had no problems.

I am a software engineer and a pretty sharp one. I have thought this through and through. I can find only one link among all the suspended accounts. They belonged to those two paypal accounts. Those that didn't, did NOT get suspended. And even those that were NOT in the paypal accounts now, but had been in the past (ones I had not used for months), got the suspension notice the same day. Cookies can't nail accounts not being used!!

This was Paypal. Had to be. And in a rather insidious way as well.

But again, can I reuse those Paypal accounts, but change the bank accounts? Or do I need brand new Paypal accounts?
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Old 03-24-2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ebayaintstupid View Post
Alll the accounts were spread over two paypal accounts. One I had moved from one paypal account to another, so I am suspecting that is how they made the connection between the two different accounts.
I'm a newbie here but that's where I see the common thing. PayPal.

So what you are saying is you had several eBay Id's w/the associated emails linked between the 2 PayPal accounts. I use a separate PayPal for each eBay account.
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Old 03-24-2008
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Question But Aspkin has not been saying Paypal is a dead end...

and if you, Modee, are saying it is a dead end, then if EBAY is now requiring for most merchandise that you have an EBAY account and accept Paypal as payment, how would you avoid it?

Like, told ya Paypal was bad guy. Fine, suggest the alternative dude. How do we set up that bullet proof Modee account?
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Old 03-24-2008
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Default I may have the smoking gun here...

not sure. I went hunting fiddling with the web sites and I had been clearing out my cookies, but not my images. I just took a peak and saw a huge number of beacons in my image directory.

Dawns on me now that it would be very easy to lay down beacons that clearly identified someone on a machine. Just save a beacon with a clear ID. Doesn't even need a cookie. Just a unique ID associated with that user.

When it shines, the host site will see it and know it could only come from one place.

I see tons of these beacons in my internet files directory with complex numeric names like

http://thumbs3.ebaystatic.com/pict/3...32228024_1.jpg

These have one purpose and one purpose only. Identifying whomever they shine upon.

Darn it. And I KNEW ABOUT BEACONS, but I only worried about them in email.

This may be why other tools seemed to work, because they would forcefully clear out the beacons, when stupid me was leaving them for EBAY to find each and every time I logged in.

I am not sure this is it. But I am deleting them. The numbering scheme looks very suspiscious and there is only one web site laying these down. EBAY.
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Old 03-24-2008
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Default And one last thing that you should likely recommend...

that each EBAY user you establish have a DIFFERENT user account on your computer.

I just realized that a cookie gets established each time on your machine using your user name.

So, if you had a half a dozen ebay accounts, and each time you log in to those accounts, ebay lays down a cookie and is able to name it using the windows user name "modee" or "aspkin", guess what.

It may not be a definitive link, but it sure would be close.

This makes sense. Use beacons to track folks uniquely by ID. Use the user name to link them as well. You know the odds of laying down the same user name in ten accounts, especially if that user name is unique, is kind of an odds on measure those accounts are linked.

Then have one suspiscious thing happen and all the questionable accounts come down at exactly the same time. Who cares if you are right about the others. Probably are.

But it doesn't explain why the accounts I was using but were not Paypal accounts were not suspended. Hmmm.

OK, I don't think this is necessarily linking of Paypal accounts. I think this is standard EBAY shenanigans. Cookies and beacons. And I am going to see if i am right as I move forward here.

Thanks for your help guys. Any more input is appreciated.
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Old 03-25-2008
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Default I did tests and proved beacons were planted by emails...

and various web sites.

I showed you how to prove beacons exist. What tests did you do?

My test was simple. I opened an ebay mail. Before opening the mail, there were no cookies present. After opening the mail the cookes are present. If it isn't beacons, who is planting the cookies? I am not writing software to put them there.

So if you "proved" they don't exist, tell us your great tests. Then tell us how you "proved" paypal is linking and suspending accounts?

Again a great righteous post modee. Not much use, just insulting. I am trying to determine how they could have done this, and I cannot believe that paypal would give personal account information to them.

And if EBAY isn't using beacons, then why is my image directory full of small invisible images with very long unique numeric names under the ebay image directories? You figure EBAY has other purposes for these files?

I have asked specific questions here. I have asked for answers and received mostly help, but no solid leads that make sense. I have put out a couple of ideas as to why that cleaning tool mentioned in an earlier post might work more effectively than just deleting cookies.

I would like to hear some logic from you as to why you think beacons don't exist and what you think these files showing up in my directories are for. Maybe you should add your responses to wikipedia. Here is their link explaining how beacons work. I am sure they would love your web experience at wikipedia to dispel this horrible web rumor.

Web bug - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Old 03-25-2008
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Turn pictures off and no beacons.
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Old 03-25-2008
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Default Turn pictures off to block beacons?

That works in email. And I do block EBAY emails from displaying images.

Beacons can be planted in other ways as you navigate a web site. Do you turn all pictures off while using EBAY? Do you do that through your browser? Doesn't that make browsing the site and listings difficult if no images are being displayed at all?

If not, as soon as you log in, they can start using beacons. So, not sure what you are advising. Could you be more specific? Thanks.
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Old 03-26-2008
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ebayaintstupid, you constantly clear your cookies (with obvious exceptions). I also have one web browser with cookies always off except for certain sites just for doing certain browsing things (not just ebay)
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Old 03-31-2008
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Default We are talking about beacons, not cookies, Jonas...

Please follow the entire thread. I had been successful for over a year with these accounts. If I hadn't been using a new IP Address and cleaning my cookies, those accounts would have gone down months ago.

Beacon tracking takes longer without cookies and is a known technology for user identification. The only way to prevent it is to make sure you delete all images as well as cookies. And never open EBAY mail.

Another consideration here is that Paypal should likely be treated in the same way as EBAY now. They trade information. I have proven this by just adding a new EBAY account to a Paypal account that was involved in a suspension, and blam, it was suspended within an hour.

You should also clean your cookies and hide your IP address from Paypal on all new accounts or you will likely get linked, if not now, at some time in the future.

I got lax on beacons and assuming Paypal would let me do business forever. They won't.

I have also researched it, and most suspensions are caused by vindictive customers or competitors filing repeated complaints about your products or you with both Paypal and EBAY. And EBAY's customer service is set up in a tiered system that allows grunts at the bottom to suspend easily without thinking. But getting out of a suspension involves hard work on your part. So, a couple of complaints by a competitor or buyer, and a grunt may suspend you, but it could take you weeks or months to rectify it, just to get attacked again.
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