Freecycle rocks, getting hijacked doesn't.

Once again, Freecycle amazes me.

Old nasty carpet, padding, and luan that we ripped off the dining room floor: All gone. Baseboard heaters from throughout the house, all gone, to replace non-functioning units or heat workshops (sold one of the thermostats, too!). Old grill that needs several parts replaced, which we're replacing with a new stainless-steel grill: Will be gone by Monday. Granddaughter's old bike with the tires that need replaced: Will be gone tomorrow. We would have had to drag all that stuff out to the curb Monday night and prayed that the trash guys took it all, but instead other people came to our house and gave it all a new loving home.

I love Freecycle. I know I've had "freecycle rocks" posts here before, but it just bears repeating.

As for being hijacked, fortunately it was the online variety, not the vehicular kind! I've no clue how it might have happened since I'm obsessive about not clicking on links within emails or things like that, but someone managed to get into my ebay account, change my name to Rhonda Wambold, change my email address, change my credit card (more than likely to match the name, which I presume was a stolen identity), set me up with a Rohnert Park, CA address and a MO phone number, and listed several expensive classic rock guitars for sale "check or money order only" which sold for a total of almost $2000.

For whatever reason the person hijacking my account didn't change my password, but I only discovered what was going on by pure accident - I haven't been on ebay forever, but a link for a cell phone battery led me to an ebay store, which led me to check My Account just because I was bored, which led me to notice that I had three things recently sold!

It took ebay security support about an hour to stop saying "we see no evidence that your account was breached" and actually check the IP addresses from my account activity history as I kept telling them to do. They had the evidence that I opened my account from Delaware, they had the evidence that all my account activity up until all my info was changed was based in Delaware, they had the evidence that I was contacting them about this from Delaware, and they had the evidence that I changed everything about me from some other location, in order to sell things very different than what I've ever sold, and accepting only check/MO when I've only ever before accepted PayPal. "Please check the IP history." Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Duh-oyyy!!

By the way, I'm intentionally listing Rhonda Wambold's name because I have every reason to believe that she was someone whose identity was stolen, and quite possibly the credit card number was stolen from her or opened as part of her identity theft. It's an unusual enough name that if someone Google's it, they might see this and contact me (just comment below, no matter how much time has passed, and include a way for me to contact you!) so that I can give her the information about this whole situation (including the last 4 numbers of the credit card the hijackers were using, and the evidence from ebay that the name and credit card was used to hijack someone else's account), in case that helps her to resolve the never-ending nightmare that comes with having your identity stolen.