Home Hub IP Address when accessed by other BT Broadband Customers

[Jenko1953]

When another BT Broadband customer accesses your BT Home Hub (for example from outside your house), do they pick up the same IP address for the hub as per when you are using it?

I had a recent occurrence whereby a purchase was made on my Ebay account by an unknown person. When I contacted Ebay, their help desk said it had been made from the same IP address that I had used for previous purposes. Nobody else lives with me apart from my wife who does not use a computer and I was in the house at the time of the Ebay purchase.

On my Ebay account, it is linked to my Paypal account enabling me to "Buy/Pay now" without having to enter any usernames or passwords.

My thoughts are that whoever made the purchase presumably using my hub access from out in the street picked up my hub IP address and when connecting to Ebay to make the purchase automatically picked up my account. Whether they noticed this is debateable but they only made the one purchase which was to a Click and Collect store about 5 miles away. If they had deliberately hacked my account I think they would have gone for multiple items instead of just one pair of £48 trainers. I have subsequently changed my hub password and all other passwords and unlinked my ebay and paypal accounts. 

Can anybody offer any suggestions as to how this may have occurred please? 

[licquorice]

Your public IP address is dynamic and comes from a pool of IP addresses, you may have it today but somebody else may have it tomorrow. Only BT business customers get their own static public IP addresses.

Edit. Users accessing your hub via BTwifi will not be using the same public IP address as you. I suggest you change your wifi password.

[Jenko1953]

Thanks Liquorice, I have already changed all my passwords but am still perplexed by the Ebay Help Team saying the fraudulent purchase had come from the same IP address as my previous purchases over the last few months. If indeed the Hub is dynamic and generating different IP addresses then I am left wondering if the Ebay response was a bum steer just to get rid of me to prevent me making a claim. Luckily, after I contacted the Ebay seller he graciously cancelled the sale and I received a full refund automatically from Paypal. 

[licquorice]

Its not the hub generating the IP addresses, it is the BT BRAS that you are connected to. You would normally expect to retain the same public IP address but if your connection drops for any reason you will probably pick up a different address when you re-connect and somebody else will get the address you were using.

Must admit it does seem a bit odd what Ebay are saying though.

[Jenko1953]

In the words of Toyah Wilcox - "It's A Mystery" !