The email message below: "Important - eBay Password Reset Required," is legitimate and was sent by EBay. I have been receiving a lot of emails from persons asking us if this email message is legitimate or a phishing scam. The email message IS NOT a scam and was sent by EBay to all of their customers, because their database was hacked into and their customers' passwords and personal information were stolen by cyber-criminals.
With the stolen passwords and personal information, hackers will be able to gain access to EBay’s customer accounts and carry out scamming activities.
So, this is why EBay has sent the email message, informing their customers about the hack, with instructions to change their passwords immediately, and with other information to help them protect themselves online.
The EBay Email Message: Important - eBay Password Reset Required Email Message
From: "eBay" eBay@reply1.ebay.com
Subject: Important - eBay Password Reset Required
IMPORTANT: PASSWORD UPDATE
Dear eBay Member,
To help ensure customers' trust and security on eBay, I am asking all eBay users to change their passwords.
Here's why: Recently, our company discovered a cyberattack on our corporate information network. This attack compromised a database containing eBay user passwords.
What's important for you to know: We have no evidence that your financial information was accessed or compromised. And your password was encrypted.
What I ask of you:
Go to eBay and change your password. Changing your password may be inconvenient. I realize that. We are doing everything we can to protect your data and changing your password is an extra precautionary step, in addition to the other security measures we have in place.
If you have only visited eBay as a guest user, we do not have a password on file.
If you used the same eBay password on any other site, I encourage you to change your password on those sites too. And if you are a PayPal user, we have no evidence that this attack affected your PayPal account or any PayPal financial information, which is encrypted and stored on a separate secure network.
Here are other steps we are taking:
As always, we have strong protections in place for both buyers and sellers in the event of any unauthorized activity on your account.
We are applying additional security to protect our customers.
We are working with law enforcement and leading security experts to aggressively investigate the matter.
Here's what we know: This attack occurred between late February and early March and resulted in unauthorized access to a database of eBay users that includes customers' name, encrypted password, email address, physical address, phone number and date of birth.
However, the file did not contain financial information. And, after conducting extensive testing and analysis of our systems, we have no evidence that any customer financial or credit card information was involved. We also have no indication of a significant spike in fraudulent activity on our site.
We apologize for any inconvenience or concern that this situation may cause you. As a global marketplace, nothing is more important to eBay than the security and trust of our customers. We know our customers have high expectations of us, and we are committed to ensuring a safe and secure online experience for you on any connected device.
Devin Wenig
President, eBay Marketplaces
eBay sent this message to ***.
© 2014 eBay Inc., 2145 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125
For information about the Ebay hack, please click here.