I think something is going on at paypal - my sources tell me that credit card transactions are looping. One person reports charges of over 30 charges on the same item - gave them pp's phone number - and paypal said it being reported on a widespead basis and they are not sure what is causing it as of yet.

I sold a bracelet to someone that had the exact same street address as I did. She got it, emailed me, and left good feedback on ebay.

That was a while back. October 6-7. Paypal was flakey when I was both looking at the transaction AND when I tried to put in the shipping number. It crashed, zrrrrrrrrrrrrp and was down for a week. It made national news.

Updates they said. Made the system unavailable.

Woa - it did more than that! Nov. 16, I got a chargeback. I went to my account to see what it was, and it was a pugster charm I'd never sold. I got scared my eBay account was compromised, but when I checked ebay, I saw that it was not me that was the seller in th eauction. Looking closer, I realized I had someone else's transaction data merged with my own.

I freaked worse. Called paypal. The first 4 people I talked to said "your account is weird." Then I got to Nebraska where the security and fraud folks are. I was told a hacker accessed my buyers account - she had fraudulent funds. Then someone told me that a hacker messed with my buyers address. I kept saying what about this pugster charm? Finally one person told me that my account got 'hosed' during the updates.

Well, that is simply not acceptable. A financial institution - even though Paypal is not a bank, they do offer money market accounts and dividends, would normally NEVER let this happen.

What caused this? One thing that was interesting is that my buyer and I had the same address. She and I both had an item in our account that we did not have anything to do with. I called her - she had not filed the chargeback against me but against the seller of the pugster charm.

There was a scam alert about vulnerabilities in credit card address processing that came out about this time. Were these part of the updaetes? I don't know, it all makes me go hmmmm.

Some folks think they were hacked. If they were hacked, then I suspect someone had fun in the database...but wait...wouldn't their internal controls lock records of transactions and prevent multiple postings to different accounts?

If it was 'bad code' this is not acceptable. Financial institutions have databses with intergrity out the wazoo. They have to - Look at the SOX act. Failure to have proper controls is just not something they'd allow. Surely?

A simple visual basic script could update the tables and fly under the radar.....diebold failed to include simple hashes to protect the integrity of the data.....Diebold states that no one would ever tamper with the data because there were heavy criminal penalties....experts say that the flaws show that Diebold is clearly unable to develop a secure system....

More flaws found in Diebold systems

I'm sorry, this card was purchased for $$150.00 this morning at 11:32 and cashed out a few hours later in another state. It has a zero balance.

Wal Mart gift cards compormised

The domain name transfer granted without authorization - the requester also requested transfer of many other high profile site domain names.

eBay Germany was hijacked

A Massachusetts businessman allegedly paid members of the computer underground to launch organized, crippling distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against three of his competitors, in what federal officials are calling the first criminal case to arise from a DDoS-for-hire scheme.

DDoS for Hire - FBI busts DDoS mafia

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - Missouri will allow members of the military stationed overseas to return absentee ballots via e-mail, raising concerns from Internet security experts about fraud and ballot secrecy.

Though state and federal officials insist safeguards are in place to protect the ballots from tampering, duplication or other forms of fraud, critics warn that e-mail is fundamentally insecure.

"E-mail is subject to all kinds of tampering," said Bruce Schneier, co-founder of Mountain View, Calif.-based Counterpane Internet Security Inc. "One of the problems with security is even the appearance of problems is bad."

E-Mail Voting Prompts Security Concerns

This is the only source I have found for this so far.

Electronic Jihad predicted on the 26th

Would love to know where these sites are. (And not so I can use the kits either!)

Sophos articles about spam: Do-it-yourself phishing kits found on the internet, reveals Sophos