Feb
26
eBay Fraud Primer: Shill Bidding
Filed Under eBay Fraud | 2 Comments
What It Is
- Sellers employing multiple user ID’s or enlisting the assistance of others to place bogus bids on an auction in order to raise the number of bids and the final bid price.
- Artifically increasing bidding activity and inflating the going bid.
Detecting
- Watch for recurring ID’s used to place bids on several of the seller’s auctions. These bids are rarely, if ever, the winning bids.
- Look for a recurring pattern of last-minute bids by the same bidder or bidders.
- Shill bidding is harder to detect now because eBay will only show first and last couple of characters of another eBay bidder’s ID in a listing’s bid history.
- Look for bidders and sellers who regularly bid on each others auctions.
What to Do
- Report suspected shill bidding activity to Safe Harbor for investigation.
- Bidding at the last moment is your best defense against shill bidding. Learn and employ auction sniping techniques.
Nov
19
My Own Experience with eBay Fraud
Filed Under eBay Fraud | 2 Comments
Well, it happened. It looks like I’ve been a victim of eBay fraud. I got the email today from eBay informing me that:
Our records show that you were a bidder or buyer of one or more of this seller’s items. We recently removed this seller’s active listings and suspended the seller’s trading privileges. Due to privacy concerns we cannot share further details about this seller.
I was attempting to buy a used hard drive from a Canadian seller. Looking back, the eBay fraud warning signs were obvious: Read more
Oct
5
Yesterday eBay announced that Yahoo! Mail has signed on to eliminate bogus emails appearing to originate from eBay or PayPal before they are ever delivered to the intended recipient. According to eBay’s corporate blog, all emails actually sent by eBay or PayPal now have a digital signature (some code that spammers cannot replicate). Yahoo! Mail will scan each incoming email purporting to be sent from eBay or PayPal and will not deliver the message unless an authentic digital signature exists.
eBay states that this functionality only currently works on Yahoo! Mail although they hope to form similar partnerships with other internet service providers in the future.
Aug
16
Phishing emails are fake emails that appear to be from a legitimate corporation with an online presence. They normally look quire authentic and urge you to visit a counterfeit site whereupon you are lured (via a fake login screen) into providing your username, password and possibly some other sensitive personal information. This allows the fraudsters who collect this data to hijack your account or steal your identity.
eBay users are often the target of these “phishing expeditions.” The senders hope to takeover your eBay account in order to pose as you as either a buyer or a seller in order to commit eBay fraud and bilk some other auction user out of their money or goods. I receive dozens of these fake eBay emails per week. I need to remind myself to be especially vigilant against this form of eBay fraud if I’ve got several active auctions running and am expecting emails from the auction site. But lately I’ve noticed a way to easily differentiate the spoof emails from the real ones. Read more