I have previously shared with you several nightmare stories because as an online seller you NEED to know what dangers you face selling online. In one blog post I shared with you my personal online seller horror story. I have also shared a genuinely scary video that details two eBay purchase stories that are so creepy you will literally have the hair on the back of your neck stand up. I also posted a nightmare one eBay seller faced by simply listing a Laseractive gaming system. If you are a seller you truly need to take time to read all of these.

Today we are going to discuss a shorter story that NativityCrimeScene suffered through. Nativity is like us, BigBrandWholesale in the sense that she sells on her own .com website, so this specific horror story didn’t occur through eBay.

One day she received an email from a potential buyer who offered to buy her entire site for way more than the value of the site. As a website owner, NOBODY ever offers us MORE. If anyone does contact us, it’s to offer less…. Duh. Anyways, his incredibly high offer was based on the condition that she gives him her site BEFORE he pays.

So when she saw the email she immediately knew something was weird and didn’t fall for it. She politely declined the offer.

This is when the nightmare begins:

When Nativity responded to the buyers email to turn down his offer, the fraudster became aware that the email address was indeed active.

The buyer was able to do some basic Google Searching to find other accounts linked to active email address.

Like most people in the world, Nativity used the same password for most things. So once the buyer (fraudster) was able to obtain one password he was able to login to her Facebook account, then her Gmail, then gain access to her .com site.

When he was inside Facebook he was able to transfer her business page to his account.

When he was in her website he was able to steal tons of data and personal information.

He then tried to perform a domain name transfer to completely hijack her URL but thankfully she was able to catch and stop this. 

Although the nightmare may *seem* over, this person now has all of her personal information, her facebook page, her websites internal data, and God only knows what else.  

LESSONS LEARNED:  

• As a seller, DO NOT use one email for everything
• Use your business email ONLY for business
• Use your personal email ONLY for non-business
• Do not create "similar emails".  For example, if your business email is BestPoshMarkStore@gmail.com, do NOT have your personal email be BestPoshMarkStore2@gmail.com.
• Do not use only 1 password
• Do NOT respond to emails that look like Spam