Forum

What is the story about ebay checking different IPs
 

Question: Won't ebay be able to recognize that this account is being used at different ip address and request that you confirm information established when registering account?

I ask because I had my ebay account since 2003 and moved to another state years later. When I started to use my ebay account from my new computer in a new state, they disabled the account until I called them and was told that their systems have security measures to keep people from hacking accounts...bla bla bla.

There are millions of AOL subscribers and if ebay picks on millions of AOL subscribers then they won't be happy when they see so many ebayers leaving. You moved to a completely different state which raised a BIG red flag hence the blockage of the account.

bambi is absolutely right! there is nothing to do with AOL or with millions of AOL subscribers. Ebay tracks #1 by your computer physical address. I once moved from my laptop in my kitchen (where I use ebay all the time) to my living room PC (where I NEVER EVER logged in to Ebay) ~15 feet away... and on my PC loggin for the first time, Ebay disabled account. I had to punch 4 digit code sent to my phone in order to activate ebay account from brand new PC

I did search the forums a lot, and yes all forums say that ebay tracks by IP, flash objects and cookies, but how do you know that they dont track by Mac Address?
It is permanent number, (unless you change the network card) and absolutely visible to Ebay new security software. Of course, IP, flash objects and cookies also have to do with tracking, but they are more easier to eliminate than your computer Mac address.

I'm not sure or not...but I don't think anyone can see your mac address. I would think there would be sites such as whatismyip that would also show you the mac address for the computer.

I may be wrong here, but wouldn't looking into a persons computer without their permission be considered a violation of privacy?

And isn't that why Microsoft required a law to be passed that allowed them to look at the hardware configuration when their software was installed.

I think eBay used to scan your computer when opening a new account but stopped for similar reasons.

Nowadays it really doesn't matter because the MAC address can be spoofed with software.

Actually, it's not that easy.
Many ISP's bind their service to your NIC's MAC address, so spoofing this causes your internet to stop working. You can still get your ISP to update to the new MAC address but the extra work is not something you'd want to do on a daily basis.

The definitive answer:
NO a web site cannot determine your MAC address over the internet. The MAC address is only visible to the first hop in the routing chain to the destination server. (there may be typically 5-12 hops in this route.)

BUT:
A website which communicates with dedicated client software installed on your computer CAN find out ANY information programmatically accessible to an application, from the Processor serial Nr , to the NIC's MAC address.

If you use any ebay software (Turbo Lister, Blackthorne) these programs are executables installed on your computer. From the vantage point where they are run (your own processor) the can see and pull all hardware information, and communicate it to ebay at the next connection.

If you used Turbo lister with account1, TL could have sent your MAC address to eBay. (it may or may not, I don't know, but if I were a programmer for eBay I would be crazy not to take this opportunity to gather info). FACT: this info is certainly visible to TL

Now account1 gets suspended, and you reformat your HD, reinstall the OS, start clean with a virgin drive.
You open Account2
You re-install Turbo lister from scratch. Brand new TL installation, no leftover clues from any previous account.
You fire up TL and TL starts an HTTP connection each time you run it, and connects to eBay. This it does on startup, even if you never upload any listings to eBay.

TL can gather your MAC address and send it to eBay in a blink. Now eBay can see that the MAC adress from account1 is the same as the MAC address from account2. And MAC addresses are 48 bit numbers which are unique in the universe.

Thinking that "they wouldn't do that because it is an invasion of privacy" is abit naive.
I would not want to bet my business and years of hard work on such a wishful assumption.
Microsoft already gathers this kind of data on every OS boot, and if it finds a different NIC with a different MAC address, will unashamedly tell you that your hardware has changed sufficiently to require re-activation.
And Microsoft has a very legally correct privacy policy.

Note that eBay's privacy policy lays out that they do not SHARE any info gathered about you, but does not specifically state what info they gather, or if they place any limits to what they gather.

AND , in the interest of fraud prevention, they may share any information with 3rd parties. as required to investigate. So if they suspect something fishy, all bets are off with respect to the privacy statements. Their suspicion would not be enough to get a court order, but they are enough to cause them to trash the privacy policy for any account.
This is similar to Pre-Crime (from the movie Minority Report)

Moral of the story:
you never have to worry about MAC addr, if you always use ebay over the web and never install any eBay software on your computer.

If you HAVE to have Turbo lister, then you'd be better off changing NIC cards, or better yet, changing computers between eBay accounts.