eBay now hiding winning bidder ID

[PhilipCohen]

Revised 18 November 2008

eBay now hiding winning bidder IDs

(This post is best consumed after having digested my (one of many) earlier posts “The ‘aiding and abetting’ of fraud by eBay” on auctionbytes.com, at http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23585&sid=ab8ab74bbd48ac56b9375ce3043204cf)

Anyway, it’s hard to believe (well, maybe not), but here we go again!

US: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200810281156252.html (28 October 2008)
AU: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/au/200810311635482.html (31 October 2008)
UK: [a placeholder for the yet-to-be-made U.K. announcement!]

“Making Winning Bidder IDs Anonymous
“Early last year, we began to anonymize bidder IDs on listings. This change was designed to protect bidders from fake Second Chance Offers and other malicious emails. As I’ve shared before, this initiative has been very successful, resulting in a 90% reduction in this type of fraud.
“Today, however, the winning bidder’s ID is currently visible to everyone after the listing ends, and this continues to lead to fake checkout offers and other spam. Consequently, it also leads to unpaid items, as winning bidders who fall victim to these fake emails often send payment to someone other than the seller.
“Based on the positive results we’ve seen by anonymizing bidder User IDs, as well as our commitment to protecting all bidders from becoming targets for fraudsters, we’ve decided to extend anonymized User IDs to winning bidders, as well. This change will be implemented sometime this week.”

The above statement is simply a regurgitation of some earlier very tired and disingenuous eBay tosh with the addition of some new disingenuous eBay tosh! These changes have nothing to do with security for eBay users! eBay’s now total anonymizing of the bidding process serves only one purpose: to make suspicious patterns of (shill) bidding undetectable and thereby stop the reporting of suspected shill bidding by concerned buyers; as a result eBay will no longer have to waste any of their precious resources pretending to do anything about it! Undoubtedly, the recently-announced 1600 eBay redundancies will be coming from this area of customer support.

Variations exist in the various processes between the eBay national sites. For example in the U.K., Ireland, Australia and the Philippines consumers suffer an absolute anonymity of bidders (ie, “Bidder N”), the only effect of which is to make blatant shill bidding “disappear”; in all other countries there is a different form of anonymous bidder alias (ie, “a***b”) and that alias when viewed in conjunction with its accompanying feedback count (ie, “a***b (N)”) is at that moment in time effectively bidder-specific and gives buyers in those other countries a chance of looking out for and thereby protecting themselves from at least the most blatant attempts at shill bidding by unscrupulous sellers.

Very relevant to this matter is another variation that has been in effect for some time now in Australia, and since 21 October 2008 in the U.K., that is, it has been made not possible for eBay users to communicate with each other by email other than via the eBay messaging system. This means that unless a user deliberately advertises their email address to another person there is no possibility of others obtaining that email address for fraudulent purposes. Realistic scam emails cannot be sent by the eBay messaging system because eBay controls the style and formatting of such communications. Any such spam/scam emails received by eBay users are not confined to eBay users alone but are also being received by many other internet users, and will continue to be received regardless, and there is no simple prophylactic for such scam emails except for the receiver taking due care.

There is then, in effect, no need for any level of bidder anonymity greater than the basic user-selected ID, and there is definitely no need for the absolute level of anonymity in use in Australia and the U.K.—except, as previously mentioned, to make even the most blatant of shill bidding “disappear” completely!

(Actually, if you read the U.K. announcement of this restriction on member-to-member emailing at http://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200810.shtml#2008-10-13100926 you may possibly conclude that it has more to do with eBay attempting to restrict any loss to eBay from users making sale arrangements outside of eBay than it has to do with any security for eBay users. Still, what would an eBay announcement be without a good dose of spin applied thereto?)

Regardless, it means that in the U.S. the current “anonymous” bidder alias (“a***b(N)”) that is effectively bidder-specific at a given point in time, when also applied to the winning bidder will over time no longer be effectively bidder-specific as the feedback count will increment over time (assuming the shill bidder ever actually “buys” anything) and buyers will therefore no longer be able to keep track of those users who they suspect of being shill bidders.

In Australia, U.K., Ireland and the Philippines we already have no chance of protecting ourselves during the auction process from the shill bidders, who are undoubtedly now running rampant on these national sites. In Australia, as of 11 November 2008, we now have no chance of noticing and keeping track of suspected shill bidders even after the event. We now have, at no time, any idea who is bidding against us. Undoubtedly this will cause a loss of confidence and a lessening of activity by buyers; the unscrupulous shill-bidding sellers may well be no better off in the long run; however, for the honest sellers this will be a disaster (ultimately for eBay too, but they seem to be unable to appreciate this).

Now, regardless of the country of residence, unscrupulous shill-bidding sellers don’t now have to resort to eBay’s classic shill bidders’ tool, “User ID kept private”, because now that bidders are totally hidden, they can now shill bid to their hearts’ content without any fear of being caught because (once again) buyers now have no idea who is bidding against them.

Understand this: eBay could not care less about shill bidding (it has no detrimental affect on their “bottom line”) and notwithstanding eBay’s statements to the contrary, this latest action by eBay (the anonymizing also of the winning bidder) has nothing to do with security for users: its only purpose is to make shill bidding effectively undetectable so that users cannot report suspicious patterns of bidding by individuals and eBay can make redundant those resources that would otherwise be required to “investigate” these user reports.

And, please, don’t be naïve enough to swallow that nonsense from eBay about them having effective active processes in place to detect and control shill bidding: they don’t (and they have elsewhere stated that they rely primarily on member reports); nor do they now have any incentive to put such an effective process in place now that they have totally obscured the bidding process and buyers can no longer spot suspicious patterns of bidding. Actually, all bidding is now suspicious!

With every stupid change eBay becomes ever less “a fun and safe place to trade”.

This across-the-board application of absolute anonymity of bidding is, in effect, a deliberate “aiding and abetting” of a criminal activity, the fraud of shill bidding, against which eBay users now have little defence and, in the case of users buying in those countries using the “Bidder N” anonymous alias, absolutely no defence. One therefore has to ask, where are our “consumer affairs” regulators in regard to this reprehensible conduct by eBay?

I find it quite intriguing that in the UK there has as yet not been any announcement that in the UK too the winning bidder is to be anonymised also. Now, why do you think that would be? If there is any logical purpose for such application elsewhere, why not also in the UK? We can only hope that it could be due to the UK consumer affairs regulator looking at this devious, unscrupulous, application of “hidden bidders” generally. We will have to watch the eBay UK Announcements at http://www2.ebay.com/aw/marketing-uk.shtml

Ultimately, one has to wonder just what are the intentions of eBay’s management team? Do they actually think that they are giving we customers what we want? Do they really think that all their users came down in the last shower? Are whoever planned this application of absolute anonymity of bidding all fools or simply unprincipled and unscrupulous? Or are all the members of this management team totally mad? Or, is it all a very cunning plan to drive down the share price to a point that they can attempt a cheap management buyout, then breathe life back into the company and make a killing? They’re certainly succeeding in driving down the share price—and driving away the customers too, I have no doubt.

Frankly, with so much time being spent “spinning” is it any wonder that this management team is habitually giddy and therefore totally incapable of making a decision that has even the faintest appearance of being logical. This arrogant, devious, disingenuous team are either simply all fools or maybe they all developed their business principles during “apprenticeships” at one of the tobacco companies.

Having said all that, I think that most of us appreciate that the people currently in control of eBay are a bunch of snakes; it’s very difficult to keep track of snakes as they slither through the undergrowth; and, as we all know, snakes have forked tongues, too!

PS: As a matter of interest, as predominantly a buyer on eBay, I have never received a fraudulent “Second Chance Offer” (SCO) (maybe I should consider changing my deodorant); I have received one genuine SCO and that originated from a seller after the seller (or the consignor) had very obviously failed to shill bid me above what I wanted to pay. Needless to say eBay did nothing about it when I reported the matter.
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Clearly, the lunatics at eBay have taken over the asylum and are bent on burning it down.
“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” ~ Albert Einstein.