can i get ebay to stop forcing me to reset my password?
June 21, 2022 12:45 PM   Subscribe

does anyone here have a solution other than give up, bow and scrape to corporate bullshit security theatre, and never use anything other than that one home-based vanilla-ass Windows box to log into to ebay?

i own many computers running various operating systems. i travel for work, i have vpns, i have android and iOS devices. whenever i log in from a different device, eBay throws a fit and, without asking me or confirming, resets my password and won't let me log in again until i reset it. this has happened so many times lately that i've become right fucking sick of it. it's become a thing now that i've reset my password so many times and i have so many logged entrys in various password managers, that i'm losing track of which password is current, thus causing failed logins and even more forced resets.

i've tried complaining to ebay chat agents (politely, as i was once a chat agent myself) and all they will do is condescendingly explain that it's for my own good and force me to reset one more time.

i am an IT professional, i use a password manager, and i only have this problem with ebay. are there some magic words or something i can say to their fraud department or whomever, that will deescalate me from the Clearly This Login Attempt Is Criminal list?

as you can tell, i'm somewhat frustrated.
posted by glonous keming to Technology (4 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
If that were happening to me, the first thing I'd try is creating an entirely new eBay account, with a new username and a new-to-eBay variant of my email address, that I'd force myself only ever to log into via one of my password managers. And every time I got one of those astonishingly irritating emails demanding that I confirm that a login on some "new" device actually came from me, I would grit my teeth and confirm it.

If I found myself unable to use just one password manager because I needed different password managers on different platforms, I'd cut over to using KeePassXC to maintain a single store of all password truth, which I'd sync to my various devices using a general purpose file syncing service not tied to my password manager; password managers that understand how to use a KeePass-compatible KDBXv4 database are available on pretty much anything.

If I didn't see the same password-reset problem, I'd conclude that my old account had indeed been put on some kind of internal list of accounts deemed particularly susceptible to fraudulent login attempts, and I would abandon that account on the basis of a belief that trying to persuade whichever mindless machine made that decision to unmake it is probably not feasible.

I would also staple this xkcd to the inside of my skull.
posted by flabdablet at 1:17 PM on June 21, 2022 [4 favorites]


Invalid log in attempts from old stored pws cause trouble. Verify your current pw. Log out of ebay *everywhere*, delete all stored ebay passwords *everywhere*, then re-log in with the correct pw. Might still not work.

As annoying as it is, stolen data is worse. 2 factor auth is actually your friend, even when farking Apple insists on sending it to an ancient iPad and not someplace useful, like my email.
posted by theora55 at 1:25 PM on June 21, 2022 [2 favorites]


I log into eBay routinely from actual new devices and I don't currently have this problem, for what it's worth. I will say that eBay has traditionally had worst-in-class password requirements, such as a required (but limited) special character set), and mandatory scheduled changes. I believe those specific examples aren't the case any more, but it's a bad sign in general.
posted by wnissen at 1:55 PM on June 21, 2022 [4 favorites]


What’s changing?
If you have a payment account, you may be required to verify your identity with a password, one-time passcode, or other form of authentication more often when using eBay.

My account has been upgraded to a payment account. What is a payment account?
A payment account is a type of payment service that lets you make payouts on demand and also lets you make payments to third parties.


So if you want to avoid this nonesense, create a new Ebay account and use it only for buying.
posted by Lanark at 1:00 AM on June 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


« Older Visiting Los Angeles with teen   |   Not half as sour as I should be Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.