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Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Hi guys, my office was broken into and my PC was stolen. It had 15 virtual machines tied to 15x 24vc unique IPs on it - 15x eBay and PayPal accoiunts. I have no backup as my SSD was taken aswell.

Now I have to create new virtual machines, which is no problem, but connecting the IPs I have with 24vc to the corresponding eBay/PayPal accounts seems to be impossible for me to do without doing mistakes which would lead to linkage.

Maybe an option is to order all-new fresh IPs for every account and maybe get gmail warning which I can work around.

Is this the proper way to recover? Thank you!

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Sorry to hear about that break-in vikt - that's horrible :(

Perhaps contact 24vc to replace all the IPs - explain your story and perhaps some kind of setup can be done.

You have all the info of your accounts for login purposes?

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Yes, I have all my logins for the accounts at least.
Thanks for the advice, I'll contact 24vc to replace the IPs so I can get back on track.
I'll blame Retrograde Mercury as it happened on Monday exactly lol

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Any chance to get the ip address associated to each account from GMail messages?

Details of each mail should contain the sender's IP. if you sent out emails from the accounts, and have them saved in "sent" folder, you should be fine:

How to Find the Location of the Email Sender in Gmail

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Thing is I never sent any messages from Gmail.
There's an IP history in Gmail- I'm trying this but I get the phone verification screen.
All accounts are from the marketplace and I don't have access to the phones, hopefully I'll be able to bypass the gmail phone verif.

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Usually if you can answer the security question + have any real phone to take a text you can login

Might also want to contact the account seller as they might have a list of all the emails they've had + security questions

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Did you order all 24VC + Accounts same time? If not, perhaps you can cross check date you ordered account / 24vc and try to link them together. Of course if it was all done same time then its no good.

Alternatively, you can try this method (I haven't done it myself, but I would think theres a good chance it will work):
1. New VM.
2. Using mobile tethering (no VPN) browse ebay and paypal, click links around the page.
3. Do this for a few days.
4. Come back and this time login to one of the accounts.

This may just build enough rapport that they allow you to bypass the security verification steps.

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

I would not recommend that at this time of year.

Silly season for starters. Might be risky.

:pop2:

Did the OP not have back up disks of his files.... in triplicate?

:shhh:

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

I seriously doubt time of year has anything to do with the advice I gave.

The purpose of the advice was to (in essence) build cookies/rapport. Time/season has nothing to do with it.

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Hi guys,

I managed to recover 10 out of the 15 total Virtual Machines.
How I did it:
6 of the accounts - proxy from the account creator.
The others - I had to look into activation dates, last gmail activity, email correspondation that contained info with my colleagues.
eBay and PayPal had no problems with me logging in - I created same name user accounts with new virtual machines.

For the other 5 - Unfortunately, I haven't sent any emails through gmail and it doesn't show activity, these are the newest accounts I have. I will change IPs with 24vc.

I now have tripple backup of everything.
Thanks to everyone for the support!

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

I personally have all my VMWares, Browsers in a 1TB HDD.....that HDD is always in my possession....but personally speaking, I hold my Browsers to a higher priority since they have all the cookies and browsing history. A VMWare can be remade with no problem.

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

One of the accounts had me do a phone verification upon trying to relist a few things after they sold. I cannot relist them without doing it.
I have no access to that telephone, what would the workaround be?
Tracfone and change ebay registration phone?

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

How I resolved the phone verification for anyone that might have the same problems in future.

1. Download and install Bluestacks (Phone emulator client for Windows/Mac) - Basically serves as you logged in from a phone. It's free and you can download it from the official site
2. Set-up your vpn connection on the PC and connect to it (I couldn't install it on the VMs as it requires at least 2GB of RAM and I'm running windows xp on VMs)
- As a precaution, I set up the name of the account as username and login details in bluestack
3. Download eBay phone app from PlayStore or Apple Store and run it with the current account credentials
4. Relist your stuff - gets through phone verification without an error.

Now I've only tried relisting once but I think it should now work directly through VM desktop. (Will get back for this and write here to tell whenever I try)

I suggest running another PC user account if you have to do it for more than one account.
Works for PayPal verification, aswell.

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Edit: Still cannot relist through VMs (PC). Only via phone for now

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Since you've already gained access into the account via bluestacks/virtual phone - why dont you change the phone number on account to one you have access to?

Sucks, it's a hard lesson to learn.taking precautions to record your info in the future may prove well.

Use a spreadsheet!! Accts name , details , actual IP address since it's static and not dynamic. And where the IP address is reg by doing a Geo IP lookup inside the viurual machine then ask 24vc where each IP is located and record.

If you set up more virtual machines and then use VPN like ethersoft or cutvpn and enter the static IPS sent to you by 24vc you should be fine. Login to the email associated with the acct first so it creates a finger print in the browser. It can be assumed maybe a new computer was bought etc.

You can always try vps since they are online in the cloud and a new machine would not matter since you login to the vps from any device. But it can smexoensive every month paying for 15 vps. But if yours accts are that valuable maybe they are worth more then $300 a month etc. To know they will always be there.

Old friends and family it's nice to talk with you again. ;)

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Thanks for the info, i think everyone needs separate HDD with the copy of all VMs. I will do this for sure!

And what will happen if you log in to eBay/PayPal with 30 days old cookies from restored VM?

I mean if you loose VM and have the 30 days old copy with all old cookies and history.

Will it make some Yellow or Red flag?

One way to avoid flags using a copy with old history is to make a fresh copy of the HD every couple weeks or more often if you use it a lot. That's what I plan to do after I start using VMware.

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

Yeah i think need something like *.BAT file run at night and backup all VM's to separate HDD or/and cloud storage (dropbox).

Re: Virtual machines gone - recovery of accounts
 

There's an easier way.......Use Portable Browsers stored on an external drive.....if the VMWare dies, who cares.....the Browser with all the cookies and history are stored elsewhere.