A little overdue, bad publicity for ebay...in England

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4533154.stm

eBay faces up to online fraud
The online auctioneer eBay has admitted an "extreme growth" in the number of personal accounts being hijacked by fraudsters.

eBay is by far the world leader in online auctions

Criminals are obtaining the secret passwords of eBay subscribers and using their sites to conduct bogus auctions for non-existent goods.

In a growing number of cases, would-be buyers on the UK's most used website are paying thousands of pounds to apparently reputable sellers after winning auctions on the site - only to find out they had been dealing with criminals.

In an interview with Radio 5 Live, eBay would not reveal exactly how many accounts had been hijacked, although a company spokesman refused to deny that possibly tens of thousands had been compromised.

"Last year there was extreme growth," said Gareth Griffiths, head of trust and safety for eBay. "Certainly last year it was a high-growth area for us, it's a painful issue."

In one recent case, up to ten people are thought to have paid a total of £15,000 for non-existent hot tubs, while another would-be buyer thought he had purchased a £4,000 camper van - which turned out not to exist.

Grab and go

In both cases eBay accounts had been hijacked to sell off the non-existent goods.

It gets to the point where that is obstructive to our inquiry

Ruth Taylor, North Yorkshire Trading Standards

The hijacking of sellers' accounts is a particularly sensitive issue for the auction site, which relies to a large degree on the level of trust between the buyer and seller of goods for its success. There are more than three million items for sale on the site at any one time.

eBay blames its account holders for not installing proper security on their home computers and for replying to so-called "phishing" emails.

These are fake emails made to look like official eBay messages and which demand the secret passwords to users accounts.

Viruses are also said to be infecting home computers by installing themselves inside hard drives, where they monitor the keystrokes of eBay users, make a record of passwords before sending them onto the fraudsters.

'Nothing to do with us'

Describing the problem as an "off eBay" issue, Mr Griffiths said the problem was "nothing to do with us".

In several cases examined by the BBC the eBay users who had their accounts hijacked claimed to be computer literate and vehemently denied that they had replied to phishing emails.


The auction site says its users are often to blame for security breaches

"There is no way I would have done that," said Dr Oliver Sutcliffe a biochemist from Nottingham. His site was hijacked over the space of one weekend to sell thousands of pounds worth of electrical goods.

EBay is also under fire from law enforcement officials and manufacturers over levels of crime on the site and the levels of cooperation they receive.

Trading standards officers who regularly investigate crimes perpetrated on the site have accused eBay of being "obstructive" in the way it shares information. North Yorkshire Trading Standards says eBay can take up to two months to provide the names and addresses of suspects it is pursuing.

"If it takes up to two months, then it is eating in to a lot of time that we have to make prosecutions," said Ruth Taylor, who heads the authority's special investigations unit. "It gets to the point where that is obstructive to our inquiry."

Faking it

Concerns have also been raised about the large amount of counterfeit goods on sale on eBay.

Adidas told the BBC that it monitored up to 12,000 auctions involving its goods every day on the British site - yet it estimated that up to 40% of all Adidas products available were counterfeit.


Many big brands are far from happy with eBay's response

eBay says it has a special relationship with brand owners, who can notify the site of auctions involving counterfeit goods which will then be taken down within hours.

However, the Ben Sherman clothing brand says it recently took eBay five days to take down an auction of counterfeit clothing - by which time much of it had been sold.

"I think one must say that it's highly unsatisfactory," said Barry Ditchfield, Ben Sherman's brand protection manager.

"With all the amount of profits that eBay makes, then there is ample scope for additional staff. Frankly, it is totally unsatisfactory, not just for Ben Sherman but for all brand holders.

EBay have rejected the accusations, saying that the company has a good relationship with law enforcement officials.

"The satisfaction level is generally very high," said Gareth Griffiths.

Strangers on Steel Horses

Did anybody else see the phish thread that popped up? Some dude asking if anyone is offended by "merry Christmas" in listings, and a link. The link takes you to an ebay-looking cgi web address that is an authentic-looking login page, but one giveaway was, it wasn't a encrypted. Pretty slick, though. I almost went for it. Never saw a phish on the boards before.

Of course not, tri. It's about spending money!

Just a heads up this morning. There's a new Major Windows glitch concerning pictures again. Windows won't have a fix until at least the 10th. Microsoft says it's far worse than the last one.

If anyone sends you a picture via email, do not open it until your Windows update!

Strangers on Steel Horses

On a whim, I checked the Motorcycle category, and when sorted by new listings first, ten of the first fifteen are scam auctions with $3-4K buy it nows.

Sad.

And this pushes most of the authentic auctions, the one where the bike exists and the seller is real, over halfway down the page.

b-bop, count your blessings someone caught it. Now, from a legitimate sellers point of view--when I have a BIN listing, with multiple items, bid on by a scammer, ebay cancels my whole listing, instead of just removing the BIN bid of the scammer.

Strangers on Steel Horses

ing up for docbigrod

Strangers on Steel Horses

Scams & bacon.

BURP

KEYWORD " SCAM " WENT TO IMAGES

When looking for the above pics I went into 2 different sites with a Ebay logo-ed typed page, couldnt read the thumb so clinked into site, both times my Antivirus blocked traffic trying to gain banking details, is this world for real.

Fartsdemper? Who ever heard of a fartsdemper?

No, that's a fartsdamper

I tried as hard as I could.