Hacking? Need answers or Help

[dlh75]

My mom has had some real problems lately. First she does Ebay and had a Pay PAL account. Well just this last week someone withdrawed all the funds from her account. Is ths fairly easy for someone to do? I know I have heard stories of people being scamed. BY bogus emails and other stuff. Which he said she never recieved or sent sent any info thru an email.
Could this also be the work of a hacker? The reason I ask this she knows someone who has said they have a friend who hacks.
Isn't this illegal?
Well she would allways ask my Mom certain questions about her ISP provider, when is she online, certain things about the bank she uses. She's kind of a phone friend of my Mom and someone who does Ebay too. So its not like she is a close friend or anything like that.
I told her this all seems too weird that she is having these problems like this. I don't think my Mom gave too much info about herself or at least she said she didn't. Is this possible for someone to track info like this online thru spyware or something.
She uses just regular dial up thru her phone provider. I told her that I would come over to run some spyware checks and install a newer version of McAfee. Plus would the firewall that is included with McAfee be anygood?

[noprob]

A seller/trader here on TechIMO explained to me to open another separate checking account Only for PayPal account.(withdraw)
Add the amount that is to be deducted no more no less.
That way this should not happen & if so then just the amount deposited is lost.
Also I've been informed to "verify" some sort of address.
If not "verified" then no paypal allowed.
I will send you PM on whom to speak to in PM.
sorry to hear friend got ripped off.

[Martoch]

Take a look at this site, some good info there...
http://www.paypalsucks.com/

[phenious]

You would be amazed at how easy it is to view peoples files over the internet. If you dont have a firewall and port 139 is open you got a good chance of getting into a remote system, sharing the HDDs and having full usage of them. If she had information in files then a hacker could have easily read it and used it. Also. If she had the passwords and accounts saved in IE like the auto fill junk then you can also use a remote control and login from the victims computer VNC style...

-: phenious :-

[nukes]

If you dont have a firewall and port 139 is open you got a good chance of getting into a remote system, sharing the HDDs and having full usage of them.

Its probably worth noting that BY DEFAULT port 139 is open, there is no firewall, and all the hard disks are shared.
Its incredibly easy to hack windows boxes, especially in their default state. Even if you disable unauthenticated access in the registry, it will still allow null sessions of various types.
There was one scam that comes to mind - Recently someone sent out a pile of mails to people with an executable, it said their paypal account would expire unless they filled in their details again, using attached executable. This then relayed this info to a bunch of email addresses. Not very nice eh?

[DrDave1958]

FWIW,

My sister buys from E-bay using paypal. She has paypal setup to automatically withdraw from her checking. It just so happens she works at the same bank. One day she noticed over $1800.00 withrawn from her account. Because she caught it right away, she got her money back. The folks at paypal told her that hackers probably hacked her Hotmail account and stole her paypal info. She did say that her Hotmail password was a very easy word using only lower case characters.

IMO, I'm not sure I buy into the "Hackers" theory. I'm wondering if it isn't a security issue with paypal.

-Dave-

[tmx468]

It is easier to hack the paypal part than the hotmail part AFAIK...

Of course, you wouldn't expect Paypal to turn round and say

'Sorry ma'am, but due to our substandard security systems, your account has been hacked into, and funds withdrawn. You will be refunded all monies owed to you, and we apologise for the inconvieniance.

Thank you for using Paypal.'

[DrDave1958]

I notified my sister about the www.paypalsucks.com website and she filled me in on the details of her paypal "near" ripoff. Here is the email she sent me.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
..needless to say I don't use Paypal anymore. To their credit, I did get my money back but only because I followed their procedures exact. Had I not continued to hound them for daily status, the 10 day written dispute requirement (which was not mentioned to me over the phone) would have passed by. They emailed the dispute forms to me (which must be notarized and received by them within 10 days of the original phone dispute) but the spoof who hacked into my account was also smart enough to change my email settings so that any email received from paypal was directly blocked and never viewed by myself.

Since I didn't know about the mandatory notarized dispute form and never received it via email, the 10 days could have easily passed by and I would have been screwed.

Sound like an inside job, perhaps?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-Dave-

[stant093]

another reason why i will never use paypal.....i got screwed out of $20 by them bastards...i have no feeling but extreme apathy for them. sooo much of a headache i told them to get $#$$ed and close my account.