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Monday, August 12, 2002

eBay Fraud I suspect there is a lot of fraud on eBay.  I attempted to notify eBay of potential fraud and they obviously didn't understand what I was reporting so dismissed it as normal behavior.  What happened was that I lost out on an auction and the winner of the auction contacted me and said they really didn't want the item and if I was interested I could buy it from them.  I said, sure, but at the price of what I would have won the auction at if they didn't bid.  By the way their response was wording it made me believe that this person was actually the original auction seller.  Obviously the seller was bidding on his/her own stuff to up the price.  I emailed eBay with all the proof and they couldn't see it.  Obviously they aren't doing much to discourage this kind of behavior especially when you wave the evidence in their face.  How Much Fraud Is There On eBay?. Business 2.0 has the story of one eBay scammer who bought and sold on eBay legitimately for many years until launching his grand scam that defrauded people out of nearly $300,000 in fake auctions. They use this case to highlight the fact that eBay's fraud prevention mechanism (mainly their feedback ratings) don't prevent many types of fraud. The article also suggests that eBay isn't being completely forthright about how much fraud goes on on the site. They only report the numbers of cases where eBay has been convinced that a scam actually took place - but not everyone reports thing to eBay (they might not tell anyone, or they may report it to local authorities or the FBI instead). Basically, they say you should be careful before you buy any large ticket items on eBay, which is probably not the PR message eBay would like to be out there. [Techdirt]   5:34:36 PM     Back to the Future It does make you think: Thanks to genehack for the link to The Time Travel Fund. Well worth a read, if not a deposit. Give them $10 now, and in 500 years, they pay to transport you to the future from your deathbed. Think about it. [Scripting News]   1:49:41 PM

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