Tracking through emails / Web beacons / TOKENS / index.dat files? WHAT ELSE?

[bollock2ebay]

Maybe even replying to emails on unsuspended accounts is dangerous too. If the email address of your ISP account is connected to a suspended account you will be linked. Ebay acts as a mail forwarder. If you use your ISP's email reply button, the other member's email address comes up (provided by Ebay) and you send reply to their private email address. So there is a transfer of info (the other members email address) which may not be just one way. That info is transferred to the address window in the email you send. Does ur email address info get sent to Ebay? Alternatively, if u use the Ebay respond button will your ISP account email address be shown in the reply? If you have two accounts u could send yourself a question and see which email address comes up when you send an email direct outside of the ebay reply system. Either the registered email address of the ebay account will show when you reply to the reply or the main email address of the ISP account will show. The ebay reply system may be a disguised form of email that incorporates your main ISP email address which can be traced as you would when you open up the email details on the origins of an email sent via a mail forwarder. Often an email that seems to come from one address was in fact from another address but sent via the forwarding address shown in the sender window

[bollock2ebay]

Disregard the above as I was confused by the mail forwarders I use into what happens

[Quickie]

I just want to address the isue of cookies, seeing that among the "suspendee" community the notion of clearing cookies is dealt with very simplistically.

If you're going to be annonymous to eBay/Paypal , you need to realize this:

Cookies/files/history (I call it the CFH for short) must be cleared before entry AND after exit from every ebay/paypal session. And at other times too.

Every email from eBay contains at least one, sometimes 2 to 4 SPG's (single-pixel GIF's)
also known as Web Beacons and Web Bugs.
If you open an ebay email addressed to account A, and in your last eBay session you accessed account B, and did not clear cookies on exit, you're cooked. Even if no browsers are open. You'e mixing cookie dough from accounts A and B, and they can see it.

Another scenario.
You exited all ebay/paypal sessions, and closed all browsers, AND cleared CFH.
Now you're reading email.
You read ebay mail for account A. you close it. You open an email for account B. Bingo, you're done.

And then you say "I've done nothing!... How did they catch me?

Duuuh...

[likethemapples]

I did have that duhh!! moment when I read my first thread on the subject. But the post above is dead-on. Simple, factual, and provides a solution.

[Chris Hanson]

Nice post Quickie.

[Quickie]

I'm willing to bet that reading eBay's emails probably accounts for a majority of suspensions.

Single Pixel GIFs can (and do) intitiate conversations between your computer and the eBay server, conversations in which information is asked from your PC, cookies are retrieved, and more cookies are planted.
The only viable solution is to go to text-only email.
It's a bummer, since once you're used to the graphics, it takes you twice as long to locate relevant information in a text version of the same email. maybe longer.

But you have to view eBay email as an AIDS infected needle. Wash, cleanse, wash some more.

Keep in mind that they watch us, suspended castouts. They read what we post. They look at some of the products that are out there for us. They try to do the same thing we're doing-- watch how we operate and learn from it, and compensate for it.

They know that if you do X and you get suspended, you will learn that X gets you into trouble, and you'll avoid doing X next time (and publish that on the forums).
Which is why accounts tend to get suspended at a later time, from the time you commit the blunder. Could be 2 days, could be 10 days. They try not to give away their methods, but the ONLY tool at their disposal for that, is TIME.
Soooo, factor out time, and go back and look at what happend, again. You'll often understand better.

[Chris Hanson]

i'm very surprised that no trust and saftey ex employee or present employee has spilled the beans yet

[Quickie]

They must be made to sign some pretty intimidating non-disclosures.
And , having first-hand knowledge of the kind of tracking they may be subject to, they may be unwilling to risk it, even post-employment.
And they may not all go home and Google "ebay suspension", but rather "IT jobs" instead.

[john11888]

Originally Posted by Quickie

I just want to address the isue of cookies, seeing that among the "suspendee" community the notion of clearing cookies is dealt with very simplistically.

If you're going to be annonymous to eBay/Paypal , you need to realize this:

Cookies/files/history (I call it the CFH for short) must be cleared before entry AND after exit from every ebay/paypal session. And at other times too.

Every email from eBay contains at least one, sometimes 2 to 4 SPG's (single-pixel GIF's)
also known as Web Beacons and Web Bugs.
If you open an ebay email addressed to account A, and in your last eBay session you accessed account B, and did not clear cookies on exit, you're cooked. Even if no browsers are open. You'e mixing cookie dough from accounts A and B, and they can see it.

Another scenario.
You exited all ebay/paypal sessions, and closed all browsers, AND cleared CFH.
Now you're reading email.
You read ebay mail for account A. you close it. You open an email for account B. Bingo, you're done.

And then you say "I've done nothing!... How did they catch me?

Duuuh...

Many thanks for your great information,u mean must delete all CFH before each entry paypal or ebay. & pls explain clearly that after exit paypal or ebay? eg. delete all CFH > logout > close browser or logout > delete CFH > close browser Thx

[Quickie]

Yes, after each exit from ebay/paypal you should clear CFH, since, if you read email addressed for another account, cookies left over from the last session witll mix with new cookies from the email.

All ebay emails have hidden GIFs. A single pixel GIF is an invisible picture, just one pixel, same color as the background. When the email client has to display this GIF, because you're opening (or even just previewing the email), it has to fetch this GIF from its location, which is on an eBay server. Your client goes to the server and asks: I need this GIF, to display it. The server doesn't just serve up the GIF, it asks, "Yeah, but who are you?. Your computer complies, and the server gets complete info on your IP, user ID with your IP, IP's geography, network name, etc. The GIF also triggers java scripts , which execute commands, including retrieval of cookies from your computer, and serving of new cookies.

There's actually more.
After clearing CFH, you must close all browsers then reopen them, in order to be clean.

While any browser instance is open (including the little "pop-behind" you may have missed)
Windows keeps a copy of cookies cached in memory. Even if you deleted all disk files, the memory cache still remains, and is only flushed on closing of the last browser instance.

You can use a program like CClean (cookie cleaner) to erase all evidence with one click. It takes one second, and is a lot faster than the 15 clicks you need to do it through IE.

If you receive emails from eBay addressed to more than one account in the same inbox, you'd need to run CClean in between the reading of each email.

You'd need to configure your email client to render TEXT only, but each client has some imperfect behaviour at times with respect to this.

If you insist on working with more than one active ebay account at the same time, you are really making security a nightmare for yourself.

And also, if you use a proxy to connect to ebay or paypal, you not only risk coming in from another country, but you WILL come in with a high number port address. This tells them you are coming in from a machine, a rackmount server, as opposed to a workstation, like a home PC, with a monitor and keyboard attached, which use lower numbers for assigned port addresses.
They'll know you're using a proxy. They may tolerate you, but it will go on your record.

[Chris Hanson]

You must have bought one of them Get Back on Ebay Books?

[Quickie]

Chris, if you were en eBay watcher, and you saw an account log in, and 50 times out of 50 it came in with NO cookies, and you had to give him all new cookies each time. what would you think of him ?
You know in this business you have to think like the ennemy all the time.

[Chris Hanson]

I would think that person is very smart..lol It's nothing that people delete their cookies all the time. They are just keeping their computer secure and safe

[Quickie]

I'm paranoid

[Chris Hanson]

Quit smoking..lol

[2145HAMILTONAVECA95125]

Hi I just got my first email from the forum and it looked like a suspension email from ebay ,i might have to change my preference to recieve emails as my nerves are a little shot from recent suspension

[2145HAMILTONAVECA95125]

Could some answer this


1.If i clean my cookies after each session will ebay know that even though i have logged in 20 or more times they keep giving me a new cookie ,seems odd that i logged in 20 times and each time there is no cookie on my pc,does this raise suspicions suspensions ?

2.Is there a ip switcher that works well ,as i was going to have 3 user names on my vista computer and on each user have a different ebay id ,it makes it less easy to slip up like opening an email from another of my ebay ids,as i have been suspended before they may be trying to link,and may make them linked now or in the future .

on each computer user name you have a clean desk top and in your email outlook text only etc you can just have the email account that is linked to ebay to avoid slip ups.
even if you are not using all the ebay ids at the same time it is back up just incase ,just change your computer id and your ready to go allready set up.

what do you think? all i would need is a ip switcher so i can change my ip for the relavent user.

Thanks

[2145HAMILTONAVECA95125]

by the way i am pretty much like most of the people here i think,i have great feedback ,allways ship out quickly these days quite pro but ebay dont care if you are doing a good service to buyers ,i owed them just under $200 for fees after they suspended me 5 years ago ,at the time i diddn't have it to send them and i thought oh i'll pay them later and had no account to sell anymore .i would gladly pay them any owed fees,most companys would give you a chance to do that but it seems they dont even give you a chance to pay it now ,and the new requirements so many picture ids etc required and then i hear so many people not being taken back after giving them all your info,then they may use it against you because we can hardly trust ebay to be decent can we.

[Chris Hanson]

Yeah ebay doesnt care at all. Right now I'm doing a test on ebay. I'm seeing how long will they let a bad seller stay on ebay. The buyers is people I know so no harm at all. But I told them i want them to leave negatives and complain to ebay. HAHAH.

Oh and the only reason bad sellers stay on Ebay for so long is because they know the system all to well

[2145HAMILTONAVECA95125]

Cookies

whats the best method to delete them ,i am finding myself deleting them every few minutes and thinking about them all the time,it really is distractracting.

one thing i am concerned about is ,i use cookie monster and it does delete them,but if i go to IE options ,temporary internet files/veiw files /it still shows some cookies in there ,so either cookie monster is not flushing them or something.

also a cookie i saw there had my computer name in it.
example computer name :john

cookie:john@ebay something like that ,but it had the name in it

does this mean regardless of ip it will see the computer name with the cookie abd your busted.

[aspkin]

You should try using Mozilla Firefox. Firefox has an option that automatically deletes your cookies each time you close the browser.

And remember each browser has their own cookie cache. So depending on which browser you use, make sure to delete these cookies.

Also, it's not necessary to delete all your cookies all the time. You'll only want to do it if you run multiple accounts.

Firefox - Rediscover the Web

[Ballsack]

Deleting all your cookies is inconvenient. Just look up any cookies named ebay and delete them individually.