Wednesday, April 27, 2005

How eBay Fraudsters Operate



Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsDuff on the JOS forums had an interesting description of how eBay fraudsters operate. I can't vouch for its accuracy, but it certainly sounds plausible.
(Picture credit Filtered Life)

You're wasting your time. A buddy of mine was ripped off by a laptop scam, and a few of us started looking at the rampant fraud on eBay... we managed to identify about 60 accounts that were being setup to scam people and confirmed 7 of them via auction feedback.

Response from ebay? Nothing.

The scam works like this:

- Create several accounts, buy & sell information and low value crap like recipies, ebooks, etc between these accounts.

- Leave phoney feedback for your phony auctions. (A++ Super seller! Great Laptop! A++++)

- Build up a feedback rating of 20 or so.

- Wait 60-90 days for your bogus auctions to be unviewable by other users

- Start selling laptops that don't exist.

- Disappear.

Does ebay do anything about this?

Nyet.


Has eBay been successful catching phishers?
 

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