The secret to avoiding phone calls to confirm your identity when selling on eBay was revealed in the US workshop on . If you don’t want the hassle of phone calls then using the PayPal security key will avoid the need to confirm your identity when selling from a different (or new) computer.
The only problem is the key hasn’t been made available to UK sellers even though it was released over a year ago in the US. Sadly, if they use the same criteria in the UK as the US – cookies and flash objects – whenever users log on from a new PC they’ll have to confirm their identity, almost certainly by phone.
The one exception to identity confirmation with be when using tools (either eBay tools such as TurboLister or those by other companies), which use . Third party authorisations allow you to enter your user name and password on eBay and a token is generated to link your eBay account with the third party tool or application.
For those sellers that are required to confirm their identity the proceedure will be:
- Select a phone number on file or to specify a new phone number and also put in your Secret Answer.
- Select whether you want to receive the call Now or in 2 minutes.
- You will receive a PIN over the phone that you should jot down.
- You will be presented with a field on the page where you enter the PIN.
- Upon success, you will be redirected back to the listing flow.
It should be a fairly simple proceedure, but it’s worth realising that if you clear your cookies, don’t have flash installed, clear flash objects, or don’t have a PayPal security key, then you’ll have to confirm your identity every time you list an item on eBay.
15 Responses
eBays security always makes me laugh, basically if you log in from a new computer and try and list one item you’ll be asked to phone authorise it.
But if you use turbolister from a new computer you can upload thousands of listings with no problems.
Well if I was not confused before, then I am now.
Please Chris, just what do you recommend?
we have around a dozen computers lying around doing various things in various places all networked
though we may only use one or two of them to log in with
regularly
what happens when on the odd occasion we use one of the others to log in with
is it per computer or isp location
Does it matter if you are abroad or is it just based on using a different PC irrespective of country?
It’s per computer so it doesn’t matter if you’re home or abroad.
Cookies and flash objects are tiny files which are saved to your computer – if they’re not present then you’ll have to identify yourself. Even with TL you’re likely to have to identify yourself the first time you list from a new PC.
The only way around it is the PayPal security key – I have one, but eBay/PayPal UK won’t let me use it 🙁
Ta Chris.
So even though my computers are behind my network router Chris, I will still have to register both of them?
Yep – although if you’re already using both of them hopefully by the time ID confirmation goes live they’ll both be trusted PCs anyway 🙂
I updated turbolister yesterday and had to log into my account on Ebay before using it.
What about mobile devices? My Nokia E90 communicator doesn’t use flash and clears all cookies at the end of every session.
Yep – they’ve upgraded TL to use the eBay login with token.
Re mobile devices it’s not looking good I’m afraid, but do you actually create listings from it very often? You’ll still be able to access my eBay without going through the identity confirmation.
“Yep – they’ve upgraded TL to use the eBay login with token. ”
eh? What’s that then Chris?
The third party authorisations in my eBay – instead of entering your user name and password directly in TL it now takes you to the eBay website, you enter you user name and password there, and it generates a software token which it passes to TL. Means your password is never stored on a PC when using TL.
It’s going to be a complete pain. I regularly clear cookies and run ad-aware and spybot scans to keep my computer safe. Already ebay seems to want my password every time I do anything, even though I tick the box asking it to leave me signed in. I lose count of how many times I have to put my password in. It’s just so damn annoying. This will be even more annoying.
I didn’t notice anything different when I uploaded from TL today (and I am fully updated), but I always have my ebay account logged in, so I can check that stuff loaded ok. I presume this meant that I didn’t have to do anything, the two programmes just talked to each other and sorted everything out?
I’ll have to try it without being logged in and see what it asks me for.