MC113 Your eBay account has been permanently suspended

[xkell]

Anyone have experience with this as a result of creating a new account? I've had two accounts for years (this one for selling, other for buying) and had recently been considering an additional one to potentially serve as my 'store', while keeping sales of my personal secondhand stuff separate. Basically going from two to three and my purpose seemingly in harmony with the multiple accounts policy.

So yesterday I finally get around to setting up the new account. 24 hours later, bam! I received this e-mail:

Your eBay account has been permanently suspended because we noticed activity that we believe is a risk to our community.

This means the following:
- You can’t buy or sell on eBay any longer. Any other accounts that you own or that are associated with this account have also been suspended.
- Outstanding selling fees are due immediately, and any amounts that you haven’t previously disputed will be charged to the payment method we have on file.

The safety of our community is a top priority for us, so our decision to permanently suspend your account is final and can’t be appealed.

And I've no clue why. I wasn't creating the new account surreptitiously - was done with the same browser and IP I use to login to my existing accounts and it had matching details other than its own e-mail address (to help keep its activity separate). I verified my phone number, linked to PayPal, went through and set various account preferences, and that was all - no buying/selling had occurred yet.

Any insights would be welcome. Obviously I'm now concerned about my existing accounts given the wording of the e-mail, so if I'm unable to respond at some point, that'll be why.

[lyndal1838]

I would not worry about the Captcha....I have had it a couple of times without ever having any problems with either of my 2 accounts.

Both are buying accounts.....I have not used the other one for a couple of years now so I know that an unused account is not a problem.

[xkell]

Pleased to report I'm still around but getting hit with CAPTCHAs a lot recently. Mostly at the sign-in page, but sometimes randomly while signed in.

It's got me thinking about whether the system's flagging me as having bot-like attributes or something and if that ties in to what happened. I use Firefox ESR (i.e. an older browser version) with Enhanced Tracking Protection on, running on Windows 8.1, and clearing cookies on exit. The CAPTCHAs are in essence saying "we think there's something fishy about you", and although I haven't done anything suspicious, I have a browser profile that deviates from the norm.

I don't use a VPN, though, and my IP doesn't change often.

[everard6920]

You should maybe check if the email associated with your account has been involved in a data breach - this could be the source of all your problems, in that someone is perhaps trying to sign up accounts using your same email. I don't know if I'm allowed to link the site, but if you search "check if my email has been in a data breach", a very handy site will come up.

Mine was flagged in one last year and until I changed my email on Paypal, I got a security captcha every single time because what happens is people run programs that will just go through all the big sites and enter your email and possible password combos to try and get a hit.

2-factor authentication on eBay is basically useless because they put a link right under the "enter code from your phone" field that says "email the code instead" so if someone has access to your email, they can get into your account no worries. Tbh eBay really needs to fix this, especially now that they are storing everyone's ID and bank information.

[xkell]

I am a fan of that site and the Aussie who runs it. Looks like I never got around donating, so thanks for the reminder 🙂

The e-mail isn't on record there as involved in a breach, and it's actually exclusive to my eBay account, as I have my own domain and use custom addresses (and passwords) for everything. That said, eBay has shared it with many buyers and it's been about 15 years since it was last changed. Been somewhat paranoid though about fiddling with any account details since the suspension, at least until after I'm done with my current round of selling.

[har314688]

Our UK and USA accounts have been suspended and cancelled. We haven't done anything with them for ages to be fair, although we might have bought something occasionally.

After 10 years with ebay, I am genuinely puzzled why they would do this.  Not even to allow us to buy things on the ebay site? Seems a very strange business decision. I could not get any information about the decision when asking about both our accounts, indeed, they told me the decision was final and closed the chat. They were both in very good standing, aside from a lack of activity selling for some time, but I don't really see why that would be an issue.

Flags  a risk to using Ebay as a selling platform - not having any sort of appeals process, let alone any warning or information about what we might have been doing wrong - makes it very hard to stake your own business on that platform.

Best of luck all.