To answer all of the above:
Q: IP6 or IP4? Question, did you have big IPv6 IP addresses when you were logging?
A: I always used
IPBurger to check ips, hence recording IP4. In a previous post I inquired about the difference and which one is ‘seen’ by ebay. When I tried tethering via my phone (t-mobile),
IPBurger showed me the IP6 and I couold only see IP4 on whatmyip.com. Either way, I never used this method (tethering).
Q: IP - I strongly advise you to record these within excel. The fact you're using a word document for 6 years make me feel you're not too experienced with IT, and may have made a mistake somewhere, perhaps unknowingly
A: I highly doubt that, as long as tracking IP4 only (not IP6) is ok. I use a mac computer and Word has a lot less glitches than Excel for MAC, and does not crash as much. In my word document I have each account listed with a list of ips and a date each ip was used for the past 6 years. Using the CMD+F (command find) option I can wuickly scan the whole document for repeat ip’s. Very rarely do I get the same ip’s ac from several years ago, more often I get repeat ip’s from the same day or few days prior. Of course I don’t log in on those, I repeat the process of mac change and router reset.
Q: Are you positive EXIF data is purged? Did you use the same item descriptions? Any similar wording? Or was it all unique? That can easily link you.
A: Again, yes. And even if some descriptions etc were similar to other accounts, at least 7 accounts did not have any images, items, categories or descriptions in common with other accounts and yet were suspended as well (all at the same time).
Q: One upset buyer buy from multiple accounts and make a formal complaint?
A: Yes, there was an upset buyer but again, 7 of the accounts had no similarities in items sold etc.
Q: What are you doing for return addresses?
A: I have had all accounts suspended 2 years ago for having the same return address so I learned that lesson. This time around, only few of the accounts had a return and on those I sent the customers a PDF file of return label via email from the USPS website.
Q: shared Icloud account?
A: No iCloud. I did use the same dropbox account for all, but the images were cleaned via exifPurge.
Q:Were you using portable browsers?, I'm assuming you weren't, and were just using browsers within each user account. Which browser where you using? Safari? Chrome / Firefox? Did you sign into the browsers (and thus sync browsing data together)?
A: I used Safari within each user account. I’m not sure what you mean by signing into the browser? I had the same gmail account signed into from the browser on each user.
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Q: Internet - Is anyone else using your internet connection whilst you're using ebay? and perhaps even logging into their own ebay account(s)?
A: No.
Q: The listings - were you selling same item across accounts? were you using the same images? were you removing exif data from images? did you're listings contain any html content that were the same across all listings?
A: As explained above. I’m not sure what the html content is but I hope the exifPurge took care of those?
Q: Did all 16 accounts go down same time, or over some period of time?
A: Yes, down to the minute according to the timestamp on the email messages.
Q: OP, in your GMAIL accounts. Did you disable IMAGES? if you didnt, and opened an email to read, you basically spread a virus to ALL of your accounts :(
A: Yes, images were disabled.
