eBay sellers began reporting last week that bogus users are "buying" items in order to get sellers' contact information. They report they are then inundated with spam email. One said the problem has been going on for 2 weeks, and wondered why eBay couldn't prevent nonsense addresses from being registered. Three different sellers sent AuctionBytes letters last week with sample bogus addresses from these "buyers":

Buyer's registered address
rgdfvbg hghfvbhbv
jbjvb
rfgfdg
fgdfghgf, MB h7f 2d6
Canada
(288) 546-3425

Buyer ID firgi29624kx
Name: Cvae cae
Address: cvsr, fgsr
City:vcbf
State / Province: Poitou-Charentes
Zip: 32165
Country : Falkland Islands

Buyer's registered address
fgasdfadsf gafsdafd
ghfdgrwwer
gfdsafdsds
51926 afdsafds
Österreich

This is not a new problem, AuctionBytes has written about BIN Bandits, as in this article from 2004 (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y04/m11/i23/s01) and this one from 2006 (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m05/i03/s01).

In response to the latest reports, eBay spokesperson Nichola Sharpe said on Thursday that eBay's global Trust & Safety team is aware of the problem. "They are continuing to develop on-going initiatives to specifically address verification to stop potential fraudsters getting onto the site in the first place. Additionally, we have been monitoring very closely how fraudsters are trying to spam users via "Ask Seller Question". We are noticing that fraudsters are changing the game and choosing to malicious bid, harvest seller's email addresses, and send spam off eBay. As you know, historically eBay has been very open for sellers and buyers to communicate with each other off eBay. Seller or buyer's email addresses can be easily obtained through multiple channels. It has always been our concern that fraudsters will move to malicious bidding if eBay is doing well with controlling the on-site ASQ spam. Therefore, we currently also working on specific initiatives that address this."

eBay sellers are hit with a double whammy when targeted by bogus buyers. First they must deal with filing claims and relisting the items, which is time-consuming and means their inventory sits on their shelves longer. Secondly, eBay does not refund listing fees for these bogus purchases. (eBay refunds listing fees for items that are relisted - but only if the item sells the second time; it makes no exceptions for victims of bogus bidders.) So while eBay loses out on potential commission fees, they actually earn money from listing fees while sellers lose out entirely.

One seller told AuctionBytes that she thinks eBay needs to either verify new buyers or ban the use of free email accounts such as Hotmail, Yahoo mail and Gmail.

Another seller said, "They didn't give me the listing fees back, transaction still shows up. They told me in order to avoid this problem, I should ask for immediate PayPal payment with BIN purchases, but when I told them that I frequently have buyers bid on items and than get add-ons from my store and how can I give them combined shipping, eBay got clueless."

The problem of online fraudsters is not unique to eBay. Media are reporting that fraudsters stole more than 1.6 million records from Monster.com - including home addresses and social security numbers - over the weekend.

But vulnerabilities on other services can actually aid eBay scammers. Last week, Channel Register wrote it appears scammers have defeated captchas, which are security devices designed to foil automated attempts to sign up accounts. The publication reported that scammers were allegedly able to use malware to automatically sign up bogus Hotmail and Yahoo accounts in order to send spam (http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/08/15/webmail_trojan_update). This can aid scammers in signing up for sites like eBay using the email addresses.

If users get suspicious and unwanted eBay related emails, Sharpe suggested recipients forward them to spoof@ebay.com "in order to help eBay track volume of off eBay email spam, take down spoof sites, and give us insight about messaging issues. Also, they can report spam directly to us within My Messages, members can go to the following link to learn more: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-spam-ov.html "