“Last year, I received an ominous voicemail from a sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department. When I returned his call, he told me that the police had just apprehended a con man who was suspected of stealing people's credit card numbers. They had caught the fraudster attempting to reserve a hotel room with my credit card! The criminal had already put more than $1,000 on my credit card in less than 24 hours.

While it was scary that someone had assumed my identity and had already caused damage, this story has a happy ending. I simply called my credit card company, explained the situation, and had my charges reversed. In all, it took me only a few hours to resolve this episode.

While my story didn't happen on eBay, it could have.”

Mr. Speer offers sound advice to protect yourself from becoming a sad statistic:

http://pages.ebay.com/community/chatter/2005February/marketplacesafety.html