[pepsi_max2k]

Hey all, I just recieved a notice from eBay (it was real, in my messages too) telling me my account had been used to send emails to other ebay members without my consent. Which obviously raises a few issues...

1. I've actually emailed a load of people in the last few days (maybe 30+), just to confirm details on auctions. I've also used general messages about 10 times in the past couple of weeks. Does anyone know if something like that might auto flag the account as suspicious and issue the notice?

2. The account really was hijacked just a few weeks ago, where the password was changed (by an IP other than my own) and used to list a load of stuff and I had to contact ebay to have it restored. At the same time my email account password was changed (i believe at the time it was the same as the ebay account's one, and referenced from there).

So obviously I'm worried that the same thing has happened again, only this time apparently just emails. Which afaik you can only send a small number a day anyway, so I'm hoping it was just my own message useage that did this.

The alternative is it really was hijacked again. In which case, what do you guys think is the cause? None of my other accounts show any suspicous activity, and at the time of the last hijack someone attempted to access my paypal account but couldn't due to wrong password (paypal let me know this, different ip, failed at login). That suggests to me that nothing is monitoring my PC activity (tojan, keylogger etc) as they'd have all this. But it's not like my ebay password is easy to just guess or crack. But they have only ever done the one account (i have two, and obviously all other online stuff) so it's like someones monitoring the user name and just brute forcing entry. And it has only happened while i've been actively selling over the past few weeks.

I also regularly run virus/trojan/spyware scanners (avg, spybot s&d, ad-aware, superantispyware) and there's not much they can find. The only thing i can think of really could be a rootkit.

So if anyone has any experience knowing what causes that kind of notice to be sent by ebay for suspisios messaging, or what may possibly be causing someone to gain my password (again, seemingly only for the single ebay account and nothing else) then I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks.