eBay Key Jank

[MistaGameandWatch]

Hey guy, last night I purchased a cheap $5 eBay key after getting the idea from YouTube comments. I thought the seller was legit because they had good ratings. Later, eBay contacted me and told me that the seller's account was hacked, refunded my purchase, and removed the seller's listings.

 

The eBay message included two keys. The first one at least opened up the "activate now" prompt, and then failed. The second didn't work at all. I am guessing this might have been a Win 7 key or something. The seller also included some instructions to visit a website to download additional software and run as admin, which I obviously did not do.

 

I am not tripping over the $5 key. But today I noticed that although my Windows 10 Pro still says "not activated" in settings and I cannot change the wallpaper, I no longer see the "Activate Windows" Watermark... given that this seller is obviously a scammer, should I be concerned? I didn't run any programs or download anything, I only copy and pasted two keys from an eBay message. Could I have made my PC vulnerable or anything serious by doing this? Why did the watermark go away? I wish I would have just payed retail price because now I am sketched out and unsure what to do.

 

[TheBahrbarian]

I am pretty sure the windows watermark goes away from time to time. I have been running un-activated windows 10 for like a year and it disappears sometimes

[LogicalDrm]

Keys are just strings of alphanumeric symbols. The system checks if key is matching what database of keys says, nothing more than that. So trying different keys doesn't hard you anyway. Not unless you try like hundreds to thousands, then you might bet flagged to be hacker.