Some eBay members were concerned over the weekend when eBay allowed a suspicious auction to continue. eBay auction #2759544268 reportedly offers a pornographic Web site that, if visited, attempts to install a Trojan program on the visitor's computer.

AuctionBytes contacted an eBay spokesperson on Friday, who promised to forward the concerns to eBay's engineering department. As of Monday morning, the auction was still running.

Some eBay members are fuming because eBay allowed the auction to continue and allege that eBay removed warnings about the auction from the eBay message boards.

The auction in question is selling a Web site with a starting bid of $85,000. "This domain is currently getting around 200,000 unique hits per day; 6 million per month," reads the description. Users say the site contains a Trojan.

A Syracuse college newspaper reported on the Web site auction on Friday. The author explained that the site owner had installed software that automatically sets the site as the browser's home page and replaces a visitor's AOL Instant Messenger profile with a link to the site. "So when buddies check a stolen profile, they inadvertently infect their own computers with the sneaky ad-ware," the Daily Orange article explained. The article referred to the eBay auction as "a pathetic twist" to the site owner's entrepreneurial venture.

eBay bans users from linking to sites unless the link further describes the item being sold in that listing. The auction in question links to a counter that demonstrates the site's traffic.

eBay routinely removes auctions that violate its polices, including its "Offensive Material" policy, which covers items like crime scene material http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/png-offensive.html. eBay has in fact been criticized in the past for censorship for its removal of some auctions. Last year, the Wall Street Journal (January 22, 2002) quoted legal experts who expressed concern over eBay's practice of exercising editorial control over items, observing that it was contrary to its original "open platform" philosophy.

Last September, eBay suspended auction items with the words "World Trade Center" or "Pentagon" in the title. And the auction site came under fire recently for removing an auction by gay artist Jack Fritscher who was selling a ?Schwarzenegger Shrine.?

eBay has also been accused of censoring its chat boards and Workshop discussions. In this case, when eBay members tried to discuss the "Trojan auction" on the eBay forums, participants say moderators pulled the posts.

Some users also wondered why eBay allowed the auction despite the fact that it was not listed in eBay's mature audience category, as would seemly be required according to eBay's policies.