The facilitating of fraud by eBay: submission to government

[PhilipCohen]

The following is my view (from Sydney, Australia) of eBay’s further anonymising of auction bidders with non-unique aliases. The ACCC’s response to my submission of 17 February 2009 and my comment thereon can be found at http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23994. Further revisions have been made to this document since it was submitted to the ACCC. I am happy to stand corrected on any aspect of fact contained in the following comment; all I ask is that any refutation be logical and detailed.

The facilitating of fraud by eBay: a submission to government

17 February 2009; last revised 4 May 2009

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission
Level 7, Angel Place
123 Pitt Street
GPO Box 3648
Sydney NSW 2001
Australia

Dear Sirs

Re The Facilitating of Fraud on Consumers by the Online Auctioneer eBay

Further to my earlier submissions to government on this matter, I address this revised submission to you because it is (still) a “national” matter that should concern you and I have not, to date, been able to obtain an understanding response regarding same from any governmental entity. The submission will be submitted by post, and also by email so that, if interested, you may avail yourself of the number of hyperlink references contained therein. The document also has been modified from time to time following comment thereon by others and subsequent actions by eBay and an updated version thereof may be found in my “original post” at http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23585

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) in 2008 examined and effectively put a stop to eBay’s attempt to continue “exclusive dealing” for its associated company PayPal, and you will undoubtedly be aware that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has recently been “having talks” with eBay regarding their “no-surcharge and no-steering rules that apply to payments using the PayPal system as well as the mandated acceptance of PayPal on eBay’s auction site.”

I am a keen “eBayer”, predominantly a buyer, and I understand pretty well how the eBay system works. I also understand that as a publicly listed company eBay’s every action (or lack thereof) will be purposed towards improving eBay’s “bottom line” (and, if current indications are any guide, that undoubtedly more to do with triggering executive-performance bonuses than with any direct consideration for shareholders) and I think that most experienced eBay “members” have come to understand that if at any time there appears to be some benefit to them from any change made by eBay, that will probably be purely coincidental. And that is the way of our free enterprise system. However, a company with such a market domination as that which eBay has, should not be unfairly disadvantaging consumers in the pursuit of that “bottom line”, which brings me to the nub of a matter that particularly concerns me.

INTRODUCTORY SUMMARY

 Undisclosed vendor (“shill”) bidding is a “false representation/statement” and that would appear to be criminal fraud under Section 178BB(1) of the NSW Crimes Act 1900. The fact then that the effectively identical sections pertaining to the “sale of goods by auction” in the Sale of Goods Acts in NSW (1923) and the UK (1979) both state that “a sale by auction may be notified in the conditions of sale to be subject to … a right to bid … by or on behalf of the seller” and then are silent on the number of “vendor” bids that may be made and whether or not they should be declared as vendor bids at the moment they are made, is a sad reflection on the drafters and adopters of both of these Acts. This ambiguity has forever been exploited by auctioneers in Australia and the U.K., it apparently being standard practice for unscrupulous auctioneers to “milk” buyers up to any reserve price or whatever they consider to be a “market” value. The new UK Fraud Act 2006 would appear to fix that flaw in the UK Sale of Goods Act, and appears to make it clear that undisclosed vendor bidding is criminal fraud. Hopefully something will soon be done to make the matter clearer here in Australia too. Of course, getting unscrupulous auctioneers or anonymous representatives of the vendor to obey the law is another matter.

 Notwithstanding that eBay’s terms and conditions state that “shill bidding” is not allowed, undisclosed vendor (shill) bidding is a problem on eBay. It can be demonstrated beyond any doubt that eBay has no proactive tools for the detection and prevention of such shill bidding. eBay relies solely on members’ reports of suspicious bidding activity before a reactive investigation is carried out by them, and often the results of such an investigation by eBay appear to be unconvincing. Unfortunately, newly implemented levels of bidder anonymity have greatly lessened the ability of genuine bidders to detect and thereby protect themselves from any but the most naive shill bidding activity, and as a consequence the increased bidder anonymity, here complained about, offers an increased opportunity for genuine bidders to be defrauded by unscrupulous shill-bidding sellers. It has been disingenuously stated by eBay that these increased levels of bidder anonymity were introduced to stop scammers from identifying underbidders so that they cannot then ascertain the direct email addresses of such underbidders and then send them fraudulent “second chance offers”, however, the effect is to make it harder for genuine bidders to detect suspicious patterns of (shill) bidding.

 The “absolutely” anonymous bidding alias (“Bidder x”) now in use only in the U.K., Ireland and the Philippines is anonymous to the point that only the most naive and blatant suggestions of shill bidding can be detected, and then only on an auction-by-auction basis. Bidders in these countries have absolutely no chance of protecting themselves from any of the more sophisticated forms of shill bidding.

 Little better is the, at-a-given-point-in-time “bidder-specific” anonymous alias (“a***b (x)”) now in use in the rest of the eBay world (and including Australia since 3 February 2009): it allows a genuine bidder to also watch for suspicious patterns of bidding, at a given point in time, on a seller’s other current auctions.

 But, this at-a-given-point-in-time “bidder-specific” alias does not remain bidder specific over time and therefore there is no way for genuine bidders to keep track, over time, of a suspected shill-bidding alias, nor, more importantly, for any third-party provider to collect and examine eBay auction data for the purpose of detecting the more sophisticated examples of shill bidding that undoubtedly are still being perpetrated. And, indeed, even this “alias” is not static: eBay is now periodically changing it, and the purpose for such changing can only be to make it even more difficult for genuine bidders to keep track of other bidders whose patterns of bidding are suspicious.

 Then there is eBay’s outrageous, classic, shill bidders’ tool: “User ID kept private”. This is a seller-selected device that masks absolutely all information about competing bidders. Its user, in effect, is saying: “Beware, I am going to cheat you.” There is simply no way that genuine bidders can detect and thereby protect themselves from any form of shill bidding. The creation of this device by eBay is particularly obnoxious and disingenuous. And a somewhat similar criticism can be made of the user-selected “private feedback” device used by some bidders.

 It can be demonstrated, beyond any doubt, that eBay has no proactive systems in place for the detection of shill bidding; all eBay’s systems therefor are reactive and rely solely on the reporting of suspicious patterns of bidding by users; and yet eBay has, by the introduction of these increased levels of anonymity, further limited the ability of genuine bidders to detect suspicious patterns of bidding and thereby protect themselves from such shill bidding.

 And finally, eBay has (at least in Australia) now blocked access to all users’ (ie, underbidders’) direct email addresses; there is therefore absolutely no logical need for any of this increased anonymity of bidders.

HIDDEN BIDDERS

In January 2007 eBay introduced an absolutely anonymous bidding alias (ie, “Bidder x”) to be applied during the active portion of an auction, an action that was introduced supposedly to protect underbidders from fraudulent “second chance offers” (SCO) but which has had the effect of making any but the most simple and blatant of shill bidding undetectable and as a result eBay is now effectively—and knowingly—facilitating the defrauding of all buyers by unscrupulous shill-bidding sellers. Shill bidding is of no detriment to eBay as it does not disadvantage eBay in any way: it inflates the price received by such unscrupulous sellers and, as a consequence, eBay’s “final value” selling fee (FVF). The removal of a buyer’s ability to detect any but the most simple and blatant forms of shill bidding also stops those alert buyers from reporting the less naive examples of same, thereby also saving eBay from having to waste any of their valuable resources pretending to do anything about it.

A number of disingenuous statements have been made by eBay in support of the implementation of this increased level of bidder anonymity, and the most obviously disingenuous examples of these statements are summarized at:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23458&sid=90d854e1c4ba29b77055b72a425a3fd9

A couple of examples should suffice:

Question: “Won’t the recent changes to ‘safeguarding member IDs’ [ie, the new absolutely anonymous bidding alias] allow more shill bidding to take place?
eBay Answer: “No—the changes will not make shill bidding any easier.”
And another eBay answer: “Once again, this initiative has no impact on shill bidding. There is no correlation between hidden ids and shill bidding.”

These answers are such patently absurd statements, it’s simply incomprehensible that anyone with any intelligence could make them let alone expect that anyone else could believe them. “There is no correlation between hidden ids and shill bidding”! Now pull the other leg!

Supposedly to counterbalance this increased level of anonymity, eBay added new “Bid History Details” pages containing additional anonymous “detailed information” on the activities of the individual competing bidders. In theory this may appear to offer some balance; in practice this additional information is an inadequate (summary of previous 30 days and of up to 30 items only), ambiguous (can’t tell if listed items bid on are current or finished auctions), and in most instances a totally pointless set of statistics: in some circumstances it can actually make a genuine bidder look like a shill bidder. Having said that, these additional pages can make it easier to detect the most naive forms of shill bidding practiced by some not-to-smart sellers. The question that begs to be asked is, why can’t eBay programmatically detect such activity?

In August 2007, eBay in the U.S. retreated from the use of this absolute anonymity (ie, “Bidder x”) and instead applied another form of anonymous alias (ie, “a***b (x)”), that was at a given point in time effectively bidder-specific, and that restored to eBay users the opportunity to watch an individual seller’s other “active” auctions for suggestions of slightly less naïve forms of shill bidding activity.
(Ref http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200708241544222.html)

However, the absolutely anonymous bidding alias is currently still in use in the U.K., Ireland and the Philippines (but not elsewhere in the eBay world). Indeed, incredibly, in the U.K. the opposite transition occurred: the at-a-given-point-in-time effectively bidder-specific alias (“a***b (x)”) that had initially been introduced in the U.K. has been replaced by the absolutely anonymous alias (“Bidder x”)!

The material difference between these two forms of anonymous alias is that the absolutely anonymous alias (“Bidder x”) is simply a numbering (x) of the bidder(s) in the order in which bidders commenced bidding on any particular auction, and genuine bidders have therefore got no chance of detecting any but the most naive and blatant of shill bidding by sellers who are not smart enough to cover their tracks, and then only on an auction-by-auction basis, and no chance of detecting any slightly more sophisticated shill bidding.

On the other hand, the “a***b” alias when viewed in conjunction with the accompanying feedback count, “(x)” (assuming the bidder’s feedback is not “private”) is, at a given point in time, effectively bidder-specific, and eBay has stated that the “alias” portion (“a***b”) remains consistent for that bidder across all auctions—but apparently not over time! Experienced buyers can, at that point in time only, check a seller’s other “active” auctions to watch out for instances of suspicious patterns of (shill) bidding across those auctions.

With regard to this “bidder-specific” alias (“a***b (x)”), the next question then is, is this alias a unique alias? In other words is the particular bidder the only one with that particular alias? That can not be the case as there simply are not enough two-character combinations of the characters used (lower case letters, numerals, some six punctuation marks: about 1764 combinations) to give everyone a unique alias, and so one must look to the bidder’s accompanying feedback count that, at a given point in time will be of a particular value, to be sure we are looking at the same bidder; and then there is always the possibility, albeit remote, that two bidders could have identical aliases and identical feedback counts at some point in time. And feedback counts invariably increment in value (or may be “private”) so that it is now impossible for users to track suspicious bidders over time. For the same reason it is no longer possible for third-party providers to analyze eBay bidding data for any suggestions of more sophisticated shill bidding. It has also become apparent (at least in Australia) that, contrary to their published statements, eBay is changing these aliases periodically, and the question must then be, what possible purpose can this periodic changing serve other that to obscure the activities of unscrupulous (shill bidding) sellers?

If, as eBay suggests, it was not possible to educate eBay users to check the genuineness of any “second chance offer” received against their eBay messages, a better solution to the supposed problem of fraudulent SCOs would have been to simply do away with SCOs. Another answer would have been to block access to underbidders’ direct email addresses and, would you believe, eBay has done just that. In Australia at least, eBay has removed the ability for a user to contact another user other than by the eBay messaging system, so that it is no longer possible for scammers to ascertain the direct email address of an underbidder. Such a simple answer, and it solves all the (eBay claimed) problems without any of this devious “hidden bidders” nonsense.

HIDDEN WINNING BIDDER

On 31 October 2008 eBay announced that at the end of an auction the “winning bidder” also would be anonymised. Previously, buyers had at least been able to see after an auction had finished, if there had been any suspicion of shill bidding by a known bidder; not anymore.

“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.”
(Ref: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/au/200810311635482.html)

The above eBay statement is simply a regurgitation of some earlier disingenuous eBay tosh regarding SCOs with the addition of some new disingenuous eBay tosh! This further change has nothing to do with security for eBay users! eBay’s now total anonymizing of the bidding process serves only one purpose: to make anything but the most naive of shill bidding effectively undetectable and thereby stop the reporting of suspected shill bidding by alert buyers. And, needless to say I, nor anyone I know, has experienced any of the problems (“fake checkout offers and other spam … fake emails”) that eBay quotes as the reasons for implementing this further change—at least none that people who are not even members of eBay don’t also regularly receive.

The whole bidding process, rather than being “open and transparent” as it used to be, is now “closed and opaque”. For buyers, eBay is no longer “a safe and fun place to trade”.

No one seems to know the reason that caused eBay to retreat from absolute anonymity in the U.S. It is unlikely that it was pressure from eBay users as, given its market dominance, eBay appears to take very little, if any, notice of its users’ concerns. Was it then pressure from a U.S. governmental consumer affairs regulator? It would be nice to know, for if so, that precedent could undoubtedly be used by eBay users in other countries to encourage eBay to desist from this deceptive practice of absolute anonymity (and the same criticism applies particularly to eBay’s other blatant shill bidders’ tool, “User ID kept private”).

WINNING BIDDER NOT HIDDEN IN THE U.K.

I find it quite intriguing that in the U.K. there has as yet not been any announcement that there too the “winning bidder” is also to be further anonymised. If there is any logical reason for such application elsewhere, why not also in the U.K.? Of course, there can be no logical answer to this question, other than the possibility of pressure from the U.K. O.F.T.

PRIVATE LISTINGS (“USER ID KEPT PRIVATE”)

“Would you like your buyers’ identities to remain anonymous? When you create a private listing, a buyer’s User ID will not appear in the listing or in the listing’s bid history.
“When to Use a Private Listing
“While there are some cases where private listings are appropriate, such as the sale of high-priced ticket items or approved pharmaceutical products, you should only make your listing private for a specific reason.”
(Ref: http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/sell/private.html)

With respect to “shill bidding” there has always been the matter of eBay’s “Private Listings”. This is a seller-selected device that has habitually been used by unscrupulous vendors to hide their shill bidding activities. My personal experience of this device, as a buyer, leads me to refer to it as “eBay’s classic shill bidders’ tool”.

This device has one feature particularly attractive to shill bidders: on such “private listings” the new supposedly counterbalancing “Bid History Details” pages for competing bidders offer absolutely no information at all, not even any anonymous information!

Anyone who buys from a seller who uses “User ID kept private” is, much more likely than not, going to be taken to the cleaners. For me, sellers who use this device are simply saying, “Beware, I am a cheat.” This mechanism has always been an even more outrageous deception by eBay on buyers than even this latest “hidden bidders” nonsense.

For further evidence of what the very great majority of eBay users think about this device (or about eBay in general), a Google search for “User ID kept private” will suffice.

PRIVATE FEEDBACK

This is a device chosen by a few users to hide all details of their activity on eBay. Naturally the shill bidders with a little more grey matter will also take advantage of this device.

If you know the underlying unique ID of a bidder (which we cannot now ascertain) and access his feedback via the old “Feedback Forum”, then you will get absolutely no information except for the bidder’s feedback count; you cannot ascertain whether a bidder has been buying from only a single seller which, if that was the case, could on the balance of probability suggest a shill; depending on the numeric value, the feedback count might be some indication that a bidder is possibly a shill. A very unsatisfactory mechanism from the point of view of genuine bidders.

If you access such a competing bidder’s bidding history from an Item Listing page via “History > Bid History > Bid History Details”, only the totally anonymous 30 day summary of bidding activity is supplied; no feedback count is supplied. This is of any use only for detecting the most simple and blatant of shill bidding by the most naïve of shill bidders.

Such “private” devices, intentionally or not, do effectively facilitate the activities of unscrupulous shill-bidding sellers.

SOPHISTICATED TOOLS FOR THE DETECTION OF SHILL BIDDING

eBay claims to have “sophisticated tools to detect shill bidding”. This statement is pure eBay “spin”: they have stated elsewhere that they “rely primarily upon member reports” of shill bidding to detect same. And, anyone who regularly bids on collectibles on eBay and uses a third-party auction processing data-base program to store details of individual auctions, previously was able to easily spot bidding activity that, at least on the balance of probability, suggested shill bidding. The problem we have now is that even after the auction, shill bidding that may have still been obvious is now effectively obscured, so it can no longer be detected during or after the event and therefore is unlikely to be reported: problem solved—for eBay, that is.

It appears that eBay is little concerned about shill bidding, nor their effective facilitating thereof. That is not to say that eBay has not in the past suspended or ultimately banned a seller that has been reported for and has ultimately been shown, beyond reasonable doubt, to have been shill bidding—particularly when that exposure has been accompanied by negative publicity in the media. It is to say, however, that eBay will do nothing about shill bidding if such shill bidding cannot be detected by users and therefore cannot be reported in the first place.

Unlike at an attended live auction where it is virtually impossible to stop “flies on the wall” or a vendor’s anonymous representative from making “shill” bids, online auctioneers have all the necessary “black and white” records to enable the detection of any such suspicious activity by unscrupulous sellers—if they choose to do so.

I have corresponded with Dr Jarrod Trevathan from the School of Mathematics, James Cook University, Queensland, Australia who, with Wayne Read, claims to have developed algorithms that would, if applied to eBay’s auction data, allow eBay to proactively control such shill bidding, and I quote part of that correspondence from Dr Trevathan to give some indication of eBay’s true attitude to shill bidding:

“Note that we were disappointed with eBay’s response to several matters concerning us:

“Firstly, we have approached them twice for auction data so that we might be able to test out our shill detection mechanisms. These requests went unanswered, as they either didn’t want to know (or disclose) that shilling was occurring, or don’t really care (as it doesn’t disadvantage the auctioneer in any way).

“Secondly, in 2005 the Townsville Bulletin did an article on me outlining my research into auction security, fraud and privacy issues. There was no ill intent towards eBay documented any where in the article … The following week, the eBay Head Office hit back directly at me (using another Townsville Bulletin article) stating that their auctions were as secure as they could possibly be and that they had a team working on ensuring auction security and fairness. They also listed recommendations for auctioning securely, such as checking photos, using PayPal, etc. (All of which are few and far between measures with obvious flaws.)

“The new anonymous bidding structure facilitates shill bidding. One of the convicted shill bidders (cited in my publications) states in an online forum that if this structure was in use in the late 90s, he may never have been caught!

“Anyway, we are still willing to work with eBay on shill bidding and other fraud related issues. However, given their monopolistic mentality, I doubt they will give us serious thought which is disappointing. Countless people from around the world have contacted us with concerns over auction behaviour. Furthermore, the scientific community is well aware of the deficiencies in online auctions. It is sad that the online auctioneers are so far behind the eight ball when the research has been out there for years.”

If you are interested, links to the papers on these shill detecting algorithms by Jarrod Trevathan and Wayne Read, appear at:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.61.7728
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.61.7072.

I then further rely on a number of eBay’s own statements to form the opinion that eBay, in fact, does not have any proactive tools for the detection and prevention of shill bidding, eg:

“In order to protect the marketplace effectively, eBay refrains from any discussion of detection and investigation methods. Discussion of specific methods can provide sellers intentionally attempting to Shill Bid with information that can then be used in circumventing detection. Consequently, eBay will not disclose specific methods or types of evidence unless they are obvious.”

This statement simply reinforces my opinion that eBay does not have any truly “sophisticated tools”, in any proactive sense, in place for the detection of shill bidding. If they actually had an effective system in place, where is the harm in telling us about it. They “refrain from any discussion” about it, I have no doubt, because it does not exist, and I quote another of their statements, from an email from eBay Customer Support dated 22 March 2008, where they effectively admit as much:

“Further, eBay does in fact utilise sophisticated tools to detect shill bidding; however, we rely primarily upon member reports as our single most important investigative tool.”

I rely upon the words “we rely primarily upon member reports as our single most important investigative tool” as a clear negating of eBay’s claim of having any “sophisticated” tools in any proactive sense for the detection and control of shill bidding (think about it, in the same sentence, an obvious contradiction—only from eBay!).

And a further two paragraphs from a “boiler-plate” email response from eBay Australia Customer Support dated 21 March 2008:

“We’ve invested heavily in systems that enable us to proactively detect and investigate possible Shill Bidding. Our detection systems collect more information on selling and/or bidding activity than the public has access to, so we can detect patterns and ascertain identities more accurately.

“We also added additional bidding information as a part of this change [to absolute anonymity] so that members will still be able to detect and report suspicious activity. While we proactively search the site for Shill Bidding, we will continue to investigate Community reports of suspicious behaviour, and take action where appropriate.”

These two quoted paragraphs are simply disingenuous tosh. Their use of the word “proactive” is disingenuous in the extreme; an outright and outrageous untruth. The fact is, if eBay did have an effective regime in place for the proactive detecting of shill bidding, there would be little need to investigate user reports of suspicious activity as there would be little suspicious activity for users to report. And, as previously stated, it can be clearly demonstrated, beyond any doubt, that eBay does not have any tools for the proactive detection of shill bidding. eBay’s approach to shill bidding is totally reactive—not proactive.

And, of course, as users have less chance of detecting any such suspicious activity, users can’t report it, and eBay therefore requires less resources to react …

This company is a master of the disingenuous statement. Well, maybe not a “master”, as many of their statements, particularly those regarding this matter, are so obviously disingenuous as to be totally unconvincing.

My personal experience with eBay also leads me to believe that eBay is not at all concerned about shill bidding—even less so now that they have effectively made all but the most naive examples thereof “disappear”. And with that experience in mind, even if it was independently established that eBay was applying best possible practice to the detection and elimination of shill bidding (which I have no doubt they are not), I would still want to myself be able to look out for at the least the otherwise easily noticeable examples of shill bidding because, frankly, in such matters as “security” and “fairness” I would not trust eBay’s current management team as far as I could kick it.

Even if it was only about perception: “Justice should not only be done, but should appear to be done.” The same principle applies to the prevention of shill bidding by eBay: “eBay should not only prevent shill bidding, eBay should be seen to be preventing it.” And that is the problem: I can’t see any proactive prevention, indeed I can’t now see some of the shill bidding that may have previously been obvious, to initiate even eBay’s reactive prevention response …

THE VARIOUS MASKED ALIASES

As previously stated, the particularly devious absolutely anonymous “Bidder x” form of alias limited a genuine bidder’s ability to detect any suspicious pattern of bidding to an auction-by-auction basis, and the additional bidding information on competing bidders, supplied for the purpose of aiding such detection, was always severely compromised by being limited to activity of only the previous 30 days and/or 30 items.

Then there is the “a***b” form of masked alias. Of the selection of characters used in this alias (the same ones as in the underlying user IDs: lower case letters, numerals, some punctuation and other marks: 42 characters approximately) there are only 1764 unique combinations (42*42); these 1764 combinations have to serve the many millions of eBay users; obviously there are going to be a great many duplications, and therefore only by looking at this alias in conjunction with its accompanying feedback count (“(x)”) can you, at a point in time, distinguish between bidders that may have the same alias; invariably over time the feedback count will increment and therefore such aliases cannot be tracked over time. And, if every user set their feedback to “private” then this alias would lose what little claim it ever did have to any “uniqueness”, even at a given point in time.

Further, eBay’s published statement that the “a***b” form of alias “will be consistent across all auctions … for which they [bidders] place bids” is a false statement. In Australia (at least) it appears that these aliases are going to be periodically changed (monthly?), and the question then must be, what possible purpose can this periodic changing of such aliases serve other than to stop genuine bidders from keeping track of those other bidders whose patterns of bidding may appear suspicious.

Instead of using two characters in combination with three common asterisks (“a***b”), eBay could just as easily have used a combination of five characters (“abcde”: 42*42*42*42*42=130 million unique combinations); they could have even used six characters (=5.5 billion unique combinations). That would have allowed every user to have a unique “masked” bidding ID. With such unique IDs, users would be able to comprehensively track competing bidders; third parties may be able to proactively analyze eBay’s data for suspicious patterns of (shill) bidding, at least at a given point in time, if not over time.

What reason therefore can there be for eBay not implementing such a unique masked ID? One can only hypothesize that eBay did not implement such a system because it is not in their interests to have sophisticated shill bidding on their system exposed. And I can only restate my suspicion that the current un-trackable masking of bidder IDs always had less to do with eBay’s claim of protecting users from fraudulent SCOs than it had to do with making sophisticated shill bidding “disappear” …

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF BLATANT SHILL BIDDING

The most simple and blatant form of shill bidding is carried out by some simple-minded sellers who have an single associated ID bid on all or most of their current auctions. Rather naïve, because it used to be so simple to detect such activity when bidding aliases were bidder-specific.

Now, if eBay actually had any form of “proactive” system in place to detect shill bidding, you would think that they would at least be able to detect such blatant examples of shill bidding promptly. But this is not the case, and there is much anecdotal evidence of this on the eBay discussion forums.

Prior to the introduction of masked IDs, I always used to check a “professional” seller’s other auctions for such activity and on one occasion I detected a common bidder bidding on many of the seller’s other high-value “active” auctions. I reported it to eBay and all the seller’s listings subsequently disappeared. A week later everything was again relisted; same shill bidding, and I reported it again; all listings again disappeared. Another week or so later everything was again relisted; same shill bidding, and I reported it again; listings again disappeared, and finally the seller was flagged “Not a registered user” (NARU). Further, it was not simply a matter of a common bidder bidding on most of the seller’s other auctions, this common bidder twice “won” the auction of the particular high-value item that I was following, but the item was then each time relisted with the excuse “buyer did not pay”…

I had to report this unscrupulous seller for blatant shill bidding on three separate occasions before he finally went “Not a registered user”. Of course, he is probably now up to the same tricks using another ID. Examples such as this clearly indicate that eBay is only concerned about that shill bidding that they have not yet been able to obscure.

This and other experiences clearly indicates to me, beyond any doubt, that eBay does not have any “sophisticated” tools and certainly no “proactive” tools for the detection of even such patently obvious shill bidding as that which previously could have been easily spotted by any experienced eBayer. And eBay has now further reduced the genuine bidder’s ability to detect such activity with any degree of probability. So, how then do they expect us to “report” it? Well, of course, that is undoubtedly the whole idea, they don’t want it to be reported!

Other blatant examples of shill bidding undetected by eBay are detailed in a subsequent post headed “The non detection of shill bidding by eBay” at:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23585 and
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24033

EBAY’S REASON FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF “HIDDEN BIDDERS”

It has been stated by eBay that this increased level of bidder anonymity was being introduced to stop scammers from being able to ascertain the direct email address of an unsuccessful underbidder and sending them fraudulent “second chance offers”. This is an outright falsehood: eBay some time ago blocked access to the direct email addresses of eBay users; even if you did know the underlying eBay ID of the user it is possible to communicate with a bidder/buyer only via the eBay messaging system, a system that enables eBay users to ascertain the genuineness of such communications.

Therefore, contrary to eBay’ published statements, “hidden bidders” has nothing to do with security for eBay buyers; its only purpose is to anonymise bidders to the point that genuine bidders cannot detect any but the most blatant and naïve of shill bidding and eBay therefore has to waste very little of its valuable resources doing anything about it.

SEVEN QUESTIONS THAT COULD BE ASKED OF EBAY:

1. If the absolutely anonymous bidding alias (“Bidder x”) is appropriate for the U.K., Ireland and the Philippines, why is it not still appropriate for the U.S. and the rest of the eBay world?

2. Why, in the U.S., did eBay initially introduce the absolutely anonymous alias (“Bidder x”) but then retreat therefrom to the marginally less anonymous alias (“a***b (x)”)?

3. Why, in the U.K., did eBay introduce the less anonymous alias (“a***b (x)”) but then change it to the absolutely anonymous alias (“Bidder x”)?

4. If the “a***b” style of alias was subsequently introduced, as eBay claims, to give genuine bidders a better sense of transparency, why then is eBay (at least in Australia) periodically (monthly?) changing these aliases? What reason can there be other than to stop genuine bidders from keeping track of other bidders whose patterns of bidding appear suspicious?

5. Why did eBay not implement a truly unique and static form of anonymous alias (eg, “abcde… (x)”)?

6. And, if such increased anonymity was, as is claimed by eBay, introduced to prevent fraudulent “second chance offers”, why has also the winning bidder now been anonymised? (The winning bidder was never likely to received a “second chance offer”, fraudulent or otherwise.)

7. And, if the further anonymising of the “winning” bidder also, was for the other (disingenuous) reasons stated (see above), why has not also the “winning” bidder been further anonymised in the U.K., as it has been in the rest of the eBay world?

Clearly, there simply are no logical answers to these questions. Not even the undoubted skills of Australia’s greatest “spinner”, Shane Warne, could be of any use in the preparation of answers that could be convincing to anyone but the most dull-witted person.

IN CONCLUSION

eBay apparently makes the claim that they are only a “notice board provider on which users post notices”—surely a most absurd and disingenuous premise, as it is they who make all the rules by which users must play and it is they who have created the anonymous bidding structures, here complained of, that enable unscrupulous shill-bidding sellers to mercilessly “rip off” buyers with little fear of detection. Surely, someone has to be responsible and answerable for the “fairness” of the operating structure of this on-line sale-by-auction system; who else could that be other than the “auctioneer”, eBay.

It can be demonstrated beyond any doubt that eBay has no “active” system in place for the detection and control of shill bidding; indeed the opposite is the case: the reality of these increased levels of bidder anonymity is that eBay has effectively obscured all but the most naïve and blatant instances of shill bidding by unscrupulous sellers (which still may not be noticed by the too-trusting buyer), so that buyers can’t detect same and eBay therefore has to waste less of their valuable resources pretending to do anything about it. And, again, it must be emphasized that this “anonymising” of bidding IDs stops any external parties from analyzing auction data, in any sophisticated sense, for the detection of such shill bidding.

That eBay could possibly think that this action by them is an appropriate trade practice defies belief. It may well have enabled eBay to minimize the number of its customer support staff but its effect is little more than an “aiding and abetting” of unscrupulous sellers to defraud buyers. This is conduct by eBay that is simply unconscionable. And, if you think that I am paranoid about this matter then you should take note of the ease with which such a trivial matter as a “posting” on the eBay user discussion boards can be “reported” to eBay and then try to figure out how to report a suspected shill bidder: it can be done, but you will find the path thereto convoluted in the extreme; and, undoubtedly, deliberately so …

It may well be that the law has not kept up with such developments in online commerce, and that this claimed-to-be “notice board provider” can indeed do whatever it likes. If that is the case, then it is about time that government regulators did something about that and legislated to require from such organisations acceptable practices towards consumers as they do in other circumstances. Surely, in the case of unconscionable conduct, such as this knowingly “aiding and abetting” of fraudsters by the obscuring of bidding IDs, consumers have a right to bring that conduct to the attention of the appropriate authorities and expect that those authorities will act to give consumers relief from such deceptive conduct.

Yours faithfully

Philip Cohen


POSTSCRIPT

In Australia: As of 3 February 2009, eighteen months after it did so in the U.S., eBay has (finally) retreated from the absolutely anonymous alias (“Bidder x”) and replaced it with the same sometime-bidder-specific alias (“a***b (x)”) as used in the U.S.

“We are pleased to announce today that from next Tuesday 3 February, eBay.com.au will change the way it displays the bidders’ IDs to align with other eBay sites (e.g. a***b).
“We’ve received plenty of feedback from our community about the way bidders IDs are displayed and we know many of you prefer the transparency that the aliases used on other eBay sites offers.
“This change means aliases on eBay.com.au will consist of two random characters from the member’s User ID – for example, a***b. This method of identifying a bidder (whose feedback score is also visible) gives members a sense of who is bidding, while still protecting the bidders’ identities.”
Ref: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/au/200901.shtml#2009-01-29174204

(But, still no announcement of a like change for the U.K. and Ireland or the Philippines!)


APPENDICES

THE AUSTRALIAN TRADE PRACTICES ACT

As far as the law in Australia is concerned, not being a lawyer, I can only quote the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) “SCAMwatch” website (my bolding):

“The ACCC administers the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth). The purpose of the Trade Practices Act is to enhance the welfare of Australians by promoting competition and fair trading and providing for consumer protection. The Trade Practices Act applies to corporations as well as sole traders and partnerships whose activities cross state boundaries or take place within a territory. Part V of the Trade Practices Act (the consumer protection provisions) also applies to sole traders and partnerships whose activities are conducted by telephone or post, or use radio or television. …

“Section 52 of the Trade Practices Act is designed to stop corporations engaging in conduct which is misleading or deceptive, or which is likely to mislead or deceive. Generally, sellers are required to tell the truth or refrain from giving an untruthful impression. This provision is the one most likely to apply to scams in general. However there are some more specific sections of the Trade Practices Act which could apply. …

“Section 53 of the Act prohibits making false or misleading representations. This includes claims about the age, quality, sponsorship, approval, price or benefits of the good or service. …”

I particularly like the proscription of “conduct which is misleading or deceptive, or which is likely to mislead or deceive”. Yet, surprisingly, the ACCC advised me in 2008 that this blatant facilitating of the fraud of “shill bidding” was not an area in which they could be of any help: apparently the TPA only prohibits the making of a “false or misleading representation” but not the facilitating of the making thereof! The NSW Office of Fair Trading took the easy way out and simply parroted eBay’s nonsensical claim that “eBay is only a notice board provider and can place whatever conditions that they like on the use of their notice board”.

THE LAW ON SALE OF GOODS BY AUCTION AND ON FRAUD

The underlying U.K. and NSW Sale of Goods Acts with respect to “auction sales” are effectively identical:

Sale of Goods Act 1979 (U.K.)
Section 57: Auction sales
(1) Where goods are put up for sale by auction in lots, each lot is prima facie deemed to be the subject of a separate contract of sale.
(2) A sale by auction is complete when the auctioneer announces its completion by the fall of the hammer, or in other customary manner; and until the announcement is made any bidder may retract his bid.
(3) A sale by auction may be notified to be subject to a reserve or upset price, and a right to bid may also be reserved expressly by or on behalf of the seller.
(4) Where a sale by auction is not notified to be subject to a right to bid by or on behalf of the seller, it is not lawful for the seller to bid himself or to employ any person to bid at the sale, or for the auctioneer knowingly to take any bid from the seller or any such person.
(5) A sale contravening subsection (4) above may be treated as fraudulent by the buyer.
(6) Where, in respect of a sale by auction, a right to bid is expressly reserved (but not otherwise) the seller or any one person on his behalf may bid at the auction.

Sale of Goods Act 1923 (NSW)
Section 60: Auction sales
(1) where goods are put up for sale by auction in lots, each lot is prima facie deemed to be the subject of a separate contract of sale,
(2) a sale by auction is complete when the auctioneer announces its completion by the fall of the hammer or in other customary manner: until such announcement is made any bidder may retract his or her bid,
(3) where a sale by auction is not notified in the conditions of sale to be subject to a right to bid on behalf of the seller, it shall not be lawful for the seller to bid or to employ any person to bid at the sale, or for the auctioneer knowingly to take any bid from the seller or any such person: any sale contravening this rule may be treated as fraudulent by the buyer,
(4) a sale by auction may be notified in the conditions of sale to be subject to a reserved price, and a right to bid may also be reserved expressly by or on behalf of the seller,
(5) where a right to bid is expressly reserved, but not otherwise, the seller, or any one person on the seller’s behalf, may bid at the auction.

It is incomprehensible to me that, in the circumstances where a vendor may lawfully bid on his own goods, both these Sale of Goods Acts are silent on whether or not such vendor bids should be disclosed as such at the time they are made, and so it has apparently been standard practice in the “live” auction industry in Australia and the U.K. to “milk” buyers by the practice of undisclosed vendor bidding, at least up to any “reserve” price. Surely, if such vendor bidding is not disclosed as such then the provisions of the local “Fraud” Acts should apply. And, surely eBay’s deliberate facilitating of any such undisclosed vendor bidding activity, notwithstanding the unlikelihood that it may be an unintended consequence of some other policy, should be required to cease.

In apparent contrast to the NSW Sale of Goods Act, in the case of auctions for residential property and rural land (Property, Stock and Business Agents Act 2002; Regulation 2003) it is made clear that the vendor is limited to one bid only and such bid must be declared as a ‘vendor bid’ at the moment it is made:

“Only one bid may be made on behalf of the seller by the auctioneer. The seller’s bid by the auctioneer cannot be used unless notice of the right to bid is notified in the conditions of sale, which must be clearly displayed and be available for inspection before the auction commences. When the seller’s bid is made by the auctioneer, the auctioneer must state that it is a ‘vendor bid’.”
http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/Property_agents_and_managers/Rules_of_conduct/Real_estate_agents/Auction_laws.html (under “Auctioneers”)

“It is an offence against the Property, Stock and Business Agents Act 2002 for a person to do any of the following:
 (a) make a bid as the seller,
 (b) make a bid on behalf of the seller (unless the person is the auctioneer),
 (c) procure another person to make a bid on behalf of the seller.
Any bid made with the dominant purpose of benefiting the seller constitutes a bid made on behalf of the seller.
A bid may be found to be a bid made on behalf of the seller even though the seller did not:
 (a) request the bid, or
 (b) have any knowledge of the bid.”
http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/Property_agents_and_managers/Rules_of_conduct/Real_estate_agents/Auction_conditions.html (under “Other auction notices, Penalty for dummy bidding”)

There are, of course, the various Australian state Acts that cover “fraud” which, as state Acts, would appear to be somewhat redundant in this age of the internet and electronic commerce, eg:

CRIMES ACT 1900 (NSW)
Section 178BB Obtaining money etc by false or misleading statements
(1) Whosoever, with intent to obtain for himself or herself or another person any money or valuable thing or any financial advantage of any kind whatsoever, makes or publishes, or concurs in making or publishing, any statement (whether or not in writing) which he or she knows to be false or misleading in a material particular or which is false or misleading in a material particular and is made with reckless disregard as to whether it is true or is false or misleading in a material particular shall be liable to imprisonment for 5 years.

Regardless, it is interesting to note that in the U.K. the law appears to have moved to a definite recognition that undisclosed vendor bidding is a “false representation” and therefore a fraud on the buyer. The new U.K. Fraud Act 2006 is expressed in general terms and clause 2(5) is obviously aimed at today’s electronic commerce. Of course, getting unscrupulous auctioneers / vendors to observe the law is another matter: it will always be “buyer be very aware” at any attended live auction.

2 Fraud by false representation
(1) A person is in breach of this section if he—
  (a) dishonestly makes a false representation, and
  (b) intends, by making the representation—
    (i) to make a gain for himself or another, or
    (ii) to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.
(2) A representation is false if—
  (a) it is untrue or misleading, and
  (b) the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading.
(3) “Representation” means any representation as to fact or law, including a representation as to the state of mind of—
  (a) the person making the representation, or
  (b) any other person.
(4) A representation may be express or implied.
(5) For the purposes of this section a representation may be regarded as made if it (or anything implying it) is submitted in any form to any system or device designed to receive, convey or respond to communications (with or without human intervention).

The following interpretation of this “Fraud by false representation” section of the Fraud Act by the U.K. OFT (who probably had a hand in its drafting) prescribes the making of a “shill” bid, ie, an undisclosed vendor bid to be a “false representation” and therefore a criminal fraud (and therefore surely eBay’s deliberate facilitating of such activity also should be unlawful). And I quote page 146 of the U.K. OFT publication Internet shopping: An OFT market study, at:
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/consumer_protection/oft921.pdf):

“10.56. As discussed at para 10.28, shill bidding was the main form of deceptive practice suspected in our online survey (13.6 per cent). This is where a seller makes strategic bids, for example from an additional anonymous account or by an associate. Undisclosed shill bidding is illegal[309] and most auction sites expressly prohibit it.
…
“309 The Fraud Act 2006, which came into force in January 2007, makes it an offence for a person to commit fraud by false representation where the representation is made dishonestly and with the intention of making a gain for himself or another. Under section 57(4) of the Sale of Goods Act 1979, it is not lawful for a seller to bid himself or to employ any person to bid on his behalf at a sale by auction unless the auction is notified to be subject to such a right. A sale contravening this section may be treated as fraudulent by the buyer.”

A PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY OF THE NEW FRAUD OFFENCES IN THE U.K. FRAUD ACT 2006
(Source: http://www.addleshawgoddard.com/view.asp?content_id=2458&parent_id=2439)

The UK Fraud Act 2006 came into force 15 January 2007. It has radically changed the law of criminal fraud.

The old law

Before the Fraud Act came into force, the statutory fraud offences were based on deception. They included:

• Obtaining property by deception.
• Obtaining a money transfer by deception.
• Obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception.
• Obtaining services by deception.

Each offence would only apply in specific circumstances.

In addition there was (and remains) a non statutory offence of conspiracy to defraud which is defined very widely. There is no need to intend deception or financial loss but there must be more than one participant in the fraud.

Defects in the old law

The deception offences had become a bit of a mess. It was often confusing to work out which offence applied, and they frequently overlapped.

The excessive intricacy of the deception offences contributed to the length and complexity of trials. Moreover, the whole area was riddled with technical loopholes. For example, the court held that a machine (for example an ATM) cannot be “deceived” because it does not think.

The new law

The Fraud Act swept all of the old statutory deception offences away. Instead a new offence of fraud has been defined as follows:

• The defendant must have been dishonest, and have intended to make a gain or to cause a loss to another.
• In addition, the defendant must carry out one of these acts:
  Making a false or misleading representation.
  …

The new offence of fraud is intended to be wide and also flexible, particularly as technology changes.

There is no reliance on the concept of “deception”. It does not matter whether the false information actually deceives anyone, it is the misleading intention which counts.

The offence of conspiracy to defraud has not been abolished, but the government’s objective is that reliance on it by prosecutors should be very much less.

The impact of the change

What will be the impact on business of the new act? This will probably not be very profound outside the criminal law enforcement field, but several areas should be highlighted:

• The Fraud Act could be used to criminalise conduct which may previously only have amounted to a breach of contract or other civil law or moral obligation. Examples may include:
  …
  ”Shill bidding” on online auction sites. This is where sellers bid up the price of their own items using a second identity.
  …
• The Fraud Act significantly limits the right of defendant to claim privilege against self-incrimination (the right to refuse to disclose documents or give evidence if doing so would expose him to the risk of a criminal prosecution) where he is being charged with a fraud offence.
 …

My further comment thereon

The Australian national consumer legislation, the Trade Practices Act (TPA), appears to suffer from the same deficiencies as the old UK law based on “deception”: too many “specific” circumstances, and “riddled with technical loopholes”. One can only hope that the ACCC will instigate changes to the TPA, similar to that in the UK Fraud Act, to cover these same modern technological circumstances; in particular, to bring to heel such unscrupulous organizations as eBay who are now, by the masking of bidder IDs, facilitating the perpetration of fraud by false representation on consumers.

A comment on Section 47(7) of the Australian Trade Practices Act (TPA)

Expressed in simplified narrative terms that I can comprehend:

“A corporation also engages in the practice of exclusive dealing if the corporation refuses … to supply goods or services to a person … for the reason that the person … has not acquired, or has not agreed to acquire, goods or services of a particular kind or description directly or indirectly from another person not being a body corporate related to the corporation.”

What is the point of the word “not” in the above clause; should it not read:

“A corporation also engages in the practice of exclusive dealing if the corporation refuses … to supply goods or services to a person … for the reason that the person … has not acquired, or has not agreed to acquire, goods or services of a particular kind or description directly or indirectly from the corporation or another person whether or not being a body corporate related to the corporation.”

That would appear to put a stop to eBay mandating that users offer PayPal.

A comment on the Section 53 of the TPA: False or misleading representations

I don’t think that there is any doubt that an undisclosed vendor bid (a “shill” bid) is a “false representation” and the below underlined additional wording would appear to make eBay’s facilitating of such activity by “absolute anonymity of bidding” (effectively the ‘aiding and abetting’ of shill bidding) unlawful.

“A corporation shall not, in trade or commerce, in connexion with the supply or possible supply of goods or services or in connexion with the promotion by any means of the supply or use of goods or services make a false representation where the representation is made dishonestly and with the intention of making a gain for the corporation or another or aid and abet or otherwise facilitate the obscuring of the making of such a false representation including (but not limited to):
(a) falsely represent that goods are of a particular standard, quality, value, grade, composition, style or model or have had a particular history or particular previous use; …”

[dargent]

Hello Philip,

While there is a lot I agree with in your submission there are parts I believe are unproductive and harmful to your overal goal.
You have based your submission for the greater part, on a logical basis with supporting evidence to substantiate your claims.
However there are many instances where this changes into mere assertions of your beliefs or maintaining that only a simpleton would believe otherwise.
This looks unprofessional and serves only to cast doubt upon those claims you have adequately substantiated with credible evidence and presented logically.

Your comment : "As you may be aware the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in 2008 examined and subsequently put a stop to eBay’s attempt to apply “exclusive dealing” for its associated company PayPal,"

The FACTS of this matter :

The ACCC advised they would deny ebay's request for immunity from prosecution and would have preferred charges (the extent of their power) against ebay, had they persisted. Ebay declined to go to court and have the validity or otherwise ruled upon and withdrew their request for immunity. No decision about legality or otherwise has been decided and suspicions and assumptions are merely that.

You also state clearly that you place no credence on the statements made by ebay or Paypal and base many of your conclusions on this premise.
e.g. in reference to the ebay notification :
Making Winning Bidder IDs Anonymous

You make the following comment :

"The above eBay statement is simply a regurgitation of some earlier disingenuous eBay tosh with the addition of some new disingenuous eBay tosh!"

Many ebayers will reason that the ability of ebay to access all of the significant data (not available to yourself) gives significant credence to the statements they make. You have not produced an argument that will convince these people or in fact anyone who does not share your cynicism about ebay's integrity. You have diverged from your intention of supplying facts rather than subjective opinion. (in my opinion)

I highlight your statement : "And, needless to say I, nor anyone I know, has experienced any of the problems (“fake checkout offers and other spam … fake emails”) that eBay quotes as the reasons for implementing this further change—at least none that people who are not even members of eBay also don’t already regularly receive."

This statement is also a subjective and limited to personal experiences and those of known associates. I don't believe that this is inadmissable as any form of evidence particularly when evidence to the contrary has been presented on several occasions from members with far greater exposure to this problem and thus a more objective view. There is ample evidence to support claims contrary to your own if you look for it.

Contrary to your view of the reasons for making Winning Bidder IDs anonymous, there are logical alternatives to your beliefs (which are cynical by your own admission) that hold equal validity (at least).

In relation to this ebay statement :

“Further, eBay does in fact utilise sophisticated tools to detect shill bidding; however, we rely primarily upon member reports as our single most important investigative tool.”
Your statement :
I rely upon the words “we rely primarily upon member reports as our single most important investigative tool” as a clear negating of the claim of “sophisticated tools” in any proactive sense and a clear indication that eBay does not in fact have any “sophisticated tools” for the detection and control of shill bidding (think about it, in the same sentence, an obvious contradiction—only from eBay!).

There are possible scenarios where these statements do not contadict each other and your conclusion that this is an incontrovertible contradiction is unproven to be more than subjective opinion.

In relation to this statement : "With respect to “shill bidding” there has always been the matter of eBay’s classic shill bidders’ tool, “User ID kept private”.

There are also some valid and honest reasons for “User ID kept private” which you have failed to communicate and I believe this is less than totally objective.

My personal belief is that their is little doubt of the efficacy of the hidden bidders initiative in virtually eliminating a significant fraud problem. The problem did/does exist to a serious extent and I am prepared to believe it was significantly reduced by this hidden bidder policy.
I believe that it was the most cost effective solution for ebay (possibly even a significant win) and I have few illusions about corporate motivations. I also believe that this was akin to killing an ant with a sledgehammer and that 2nd chance offers would have been better discontinued.
But that is only my opinion and I do not have access to the data required to draw a totally informed conclusion. I am only able to have strong reservations and serious suspicions and I believe it is a serious error of judgement to compromise the credibility of the claims we can confidently and competently make by introducing assumptions that can easily be shown to be ill-informed, subjective, purely anecdotal, biased or cynical.

I would like to see hidden bidders removed also.
Hidden Bidders stopped me from buying on ebay completely, as it has many thousands of others.

The Hidden Bidders policy creates distrust for buyers and allows dishonest sellers to shill bid with much less chance of being detected. This damage exceeds the benefit of 2nd chance offers and they should simply be discontinued and transparency of bidders renewed.

This reason is sufficient to mount a convincing case to ebay and is far easier for the general populace to understand and embrace. There is no need or logic in introducing more reasons and definitely not vague and unsupportable ones. IMO

I admire your passion and our beliefs are not dissimilar, just slight differences of opinion on how to go about it.

Best Regards,

dargent.

[PhilipCohen]

Hi dargent,

Thanks for the considered response.

I accept some of your criticisms as valid. My son also says that I tend to “rant” about the matter; I find so many of eBay’s statements and actions of recent times to be so obviously disingenuous and/or unscrupulous that I simply cannot help myself. My problem is I used to really enjoy “the hunt” on eBay, but not any more, and that irritates me intensely.

“As you may be aware the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission …”

I think that you are spitting hairs with the “ACCC/PayPal” matter. The ACCC’s actions did effectively stop this attempted anti-competitive activity by eBay. To ensure an additional 3% of nearly every eBay transaction, I have no doubt that eBay would have soldiered on if they though they had a reasonable chance of success. After all, they must have had, in the first place, (good?) advice from Deacons to the effect that this “exclusive dealing” was attainable …

"The above eBay statement is simply a regurgitation…”
“I rely upon the words ‘we rely primarily upon member reports …’”

Agreed, it is only opinion, and can only ever be so as eBay will not disclose their methods of pro-actively detecting shill bidding, however there is an abundance of anecdotal evidence on the eBay forums of examples of blatant shill bidding that eBay has not detected. Frankly, I don’t care if they, in fact, have no “pro-active” system for the detection of shill bidding. What I object to is the deviousness of their removing my ability to protect myself.

The most simple and blatant form of shill bidding is carried out by some simple-minded sellers who simply have a single associated ID bid on every one of their current auctions. Rather naïve, because it used to be so simple to detect such activity when the bidder aliases were bidder-specific.

Now, if eBay actually had any form of “pro-active” system in place to detect shill bidding, you would think that they would at least be able to detect such blatant situations promptly. But this is not the case, and there is still anecdotal evidence of this on the eBay forums but now only applying to items listed on the U.S. site (where the bidding alias is still effectively bidder specific) as such shill bidding activity that was previously so blatantly obvious can no longer be detected by users on the Australian site.

I always used to check a “professional” seller’s other auctions for such activity and on one particular occasion I detected a common bidder bidding on many of a seller’s other auctions. I reported it to eBay and all the listings subsequently disappeared. Then everything was again relisted; same shill bidding, and I reported it again; listings again disappeared. Then everything was again relisted; same shill bidding, and I reported it again; listings again disappeared. Finally they went “Not a registered user” (NARU). And it was not simply a matter of the same bidder bidding on most of the seller’s other auctions, this bidder twice “won” the auction (that I was following), but the item was then relisted as “buyer did not pay”…

The point I would make about this experience is that I had to report this unscrupulous seller for blatant shill bidding three times before he finally went “NARU”. Of course, he is probably now up to the same tricks using other ID.

That situation clearly indicates to me, I believe “beyond any reasonable doubt”, that eBay does not have any “sophisticated tools”, certainly no “pro-active” tools, for the detection of even such blatantly obvious shill bidding that could have previously been otherwise spotted by any experienced buyer. And, of course they have now removed the buyers’ ability to detect same so how can we “report” it. Reprehensible, still.

“With respect to “shill bidding” there has always been the matter of eBay’s classic shill bidders’ tool, “User ID kept private”.

Yes, I think eBay says something about using this feature for items of “higher value” and/or “naughty” items normally delivered in “plain brown paper wrapping”. If only it was only used for that purpose! Anyway with the absolutely anonymous alias in place there is no longer a need for such vendor-selected further anonymising of buyers; unscrupulous sellers can now shill bid to their hearts’ content with little chance of being detected.


You will notice that I have not actually complained about the form of increased bidder anonymity in use in the U.S. and elsewhere, as there it is still possible for a buyer to watch for suspicious patterns of bidding on a seller’s other auctions. It is the absolutely anonymous alias that I strongly object to, for the reason I have laid out in the OP.

Having said all that we do agree on the utter stupidity of eBay’s introduction of the absolutely anonymous alias.

However, I am disappointed that you did not analyze the logic of or attempt to offer any possible answers to my “Five questions that that could be asked of eBay”.
_________________
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.

[up4sale]

These steps ebay has taken has allowed them to cut a large amount of workers that would have dealt with the complaints about shill bidders. They don't even reply to complaints with real answers anymore. I reported a shill bidder last week and did not get reply. The only way I new that shilling was happening was the guy sold the same website four times in the last month.never leaving feedback for these sales. Ebay has taken live support away too as I am sure they could not handle the number of problems with sellers. These are not popular steps to take but when the ship is sinking, you must take steps before you jump ship.
_________________
James Christie
http://www.up4sale.net

[dargent]

Hi! Philip, I genuinely considered the five questions as being asked rhetorically of ebay rather than of forum contributors.
This could be one of the disadvantages of very long posts.
I apologise that I did not acknowledge them.

As you say we share a common desire to see hidden bidders removed.
I don't have your complete distrust of ebay and paypal, probably because my expectations of corporations are lower than yours.
The following are simply my opinion.

Ebay and Paypal's mindset that solutions to all problems must also mean increased profit is in line with most corporate objectives and so it is self defeating to be infuriated by it.
It is a distinct advantage to be able to trust implicitly that this is the reality and so a very large percentage of otherwise possible, time consuming alternatives can be simply discarded without consideration.
In other words one can have complete trust that ebay and paypal will advantage ebay and paypal.

This doesn't mean simply accept their policies or not vigorously oppose them when they are unjust and/or merely stupid.
But asking them to exchange a profit generating solution for an expensive alternative won't be successful often enough to be considered a winning strategy.
There is rarely any success in pulling in opposite directions either and as no result is a win for ebay/Paypal they will happily tug-O-war with you until the 12 th of never.
It is possible for members to influence ebay's (shareholder gratifying) solutions coincidently however.
Not to gain advantages probably, but to least disadvantage members by 'assisting ebay' to develop creative, mutually advantageous alternatives.
The keyword is coincidently as Philip mentions above - if anyone thinks a corporation has a heart they are bound for disappointment.
A combined effort to assist ebay/paypal to achieve their objectives (when they almost invariably do anyway) with the least disruption and disadvantage to members will achieve the best possible result far more often than confrontation.
This is a far less costly method for ebay also and these expenses can be allocated to the solution instead.

I will attempt to answer your questions if you want me to Philip but I am only able to give my opinion and I can't really see how this assists you.
These answers are surely required from someone with authority to speak and who will be able to be held accountable for their answers.
I also don't see these questions as being the most pertinent to the issue.

The answer to this would be very pertinent :

"Please explain why 2nd Chance Offers are given a higher priority than transparency and buyer confidence, whose loss has the effect of destroying the businesses of thousands of ebayers?"

Regards,

dargent.

[PhilipCohen]

Hi dargent,

Of course, your summation of the corporate ethic is spot on, and I don’t have a particular problem with that. What I do resent is eBay deliberately hiding the unscrupulous activities of those who would try to cheat me.

In fact, I did start out writing to eBay head office about all the matters that concerned me (most of the stuff is recorded elsewhere on the auctionbytes.com forum). I even got several responses; but in the end they had made a “considered” decision and they were sticking with it. And that’s fine too, as long as those decisions don’t expose me to unfair trading practices.

I think the only thing that eBay has in any way backtracked on is the current feedback fiasco. (There must have been a noticeable effect on revenue.) And, as I have not bought (or sold) anything recently, I don’t know whether the changes have yet been implemented nor whether the changes will make the situation better, or even worse.

Your comment about SCOs is, of course, valid. The problem is, I suspect that this increased level of bidder anonymity never had anything to do with SCOs; I suspect it was always about an attempt to obscure shill bidding so that buyers could not detect it and eBay could save resources by not having to do anything about it. And, yes, I am cynical, particularly about the principles and trade practices of eBay.

I should mention that I mainly buy unique collectible items (flat art) and the only SCO I have ever received in 200 purchases was a genuine one from a seller who had failed to shill bid me higher than I wanted to go. Needless to say when I reported it eBay did nothing about it.

I think the details of one of my other experiences of blatant shill bidding by a seller (that I have now included in the OP) establishes beyond any reasonable doubt that eBay does not have any “sophisticated tools” for the detection of shill bidding and that indeed they do (as they have stated) “rely primarily on user reports” of such. Indeed, I would say they rely solely on user reports. Of course, users can no longer report such activity because they can no longer detect it. Joseph Heller would be proud of that one.

Unfortunately, eBay being the corporate monster that it is, I suspect that only government pressure can stop them from exploiting their consumers unfairly. Time will tell. And, of course, eBay’s 2008 fourth quarter figures are due out tomorrow (21st): should be an interesting day.

Of course, I was not serious about you answering the five questions, but it would be interesting to know how eBay would answer same.

At the end of the day eBay should no more be entitled to facilitate others to cheat their consumers than they themselves should be allowed to cheat their consumers, no matter that they may claim that the actions that cause such facilitation may have had some other purpose.
_________________
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.

[dargent]

Hi! Philip,
It is great to see sensible discourse occurring about this issue and I would like to commend your passion and efforts in facilitating this.
This issue is incredibly complex and I sincerely believe simplifying it as much as possible is the only way to attract a groundswell of support.
I'm sure if this subject was not so large many more would agree with your stance on this issue but it is too dificult and requires too much effort.

For this reason I would like to address one or two components only.
At this time I would like to give some information on two misconceived components that I consider are pivotal to this discussion.
This is only my opinion and I offer it only as a different perspective, that which you are satisfied is incorrect (or all) can be discarded.

I have a significant difference of opinion in that I believe the hidden bidders policy is a genuine attempt to reduce the incidence of fraud associated with 2nd chance offers.
(However I admit to being mystified as to why so big a solution was thrown at what appears to be a relatively small problem to fix.
The discontinuation of the 2nd chance offer option seems to be the blatantly obvious solution.)

The misconceptions : Fraudulent 2nd Chance Offers (SCOs) and Shill Bidding.

In relation to SCO fraud : This fraud has nothing to do with the legitimate seller of the item he is/was also a victim.

This particular fraud involved opportunists (thieves) who would contact underbidders via the contact member facility and pretend to be the legitimate seller.
These scammers preyed on the trust (and greed too) of buyers who clearly demonstrated their desire for the item by bidding.
They were easily lured by the perceived bargain and duped by convincing copies of the genuine listings with the scammer's bank details added to it.
The victim was duped into paying the funds into the scammer's account without any awareness of the legitimate seller.
The legitimate seller would only learn of this when abused by a very irate buyer whose item did not arrive.
This reached epidemic proportions involving millions of dollars a month and something undoubtedly needed to be done.

Whether Hiding Bidder's Identities was the best solution or not, to say that there is no valid reason for it is incorrect.

A similar argument can be mounted to support making the winning bidder anonymous too, as ebay maintains is the genuine reason.

In relation to Shill Bidding : I would like to inform you that shill bidding was a deeply entrenched problem long before hidden Bidders was introduced.
In 2005 I set myself a mission to follow the trail of a Shilling Ring that I had stumbled upon.
I identified (beyond my reasonable doubt) a ring that comprised more than 20 large sellers with a rotating base of thousands of willing shill bidders. These Shill Bidders had Feedback Ratings that were anywhere between zero and 1500.
Some had been on ebay for 5 or six years and were still zero feedbackers although they were making 20 bids each month.

The incidence of Shilling with any one seller was so small a percentage of their total bids that it was impossible to conclude that shill bidding was occurring for any individual ID but it could be clearly seen beyond reasonable doubt when viewed in it's entirety.

I do not believe that even the most sophisticated of diagnostic tools could have picked this up. However once alerted to a particular ID these tools could monitor and ascertain future bidding patterns and compile sufficient evidence. For nearly a year I logged this ring's activities on a spreadsheet and was able to see many Shillers deregistered. It was often possible to predict when some shilling IDs would bid upon a certain seller's items again because the modus operandi was so regimented that a similar pattern of bids would be followed just a few months apart.

Something to consider : If Shill Bidding has increased dramatically since the introduction of Hidden bidders why are average FV prices continuing to decrease?
A perception that Shilling is rampant has reduced confidence admittedly and this would account for some of this but the increase must be small to effect a net reduction.
Also IF the ulterior motive for ebay was to increase the FV average they would quickly abandon what is obviously not working.

I believe that the majority of sellers will not resort to shilling simply because they can and those that are so inclined have had sophisticated methods in place already before Hidden Bidders was introduced.

I sincerely believe that the most significant detriment of this policy is the lack of confidence it has engendered - the reality of the incidence of shilling and any increase is far outweighed by this.

Because this lack of confidence is hurting ebay's pocket too I believe they will be more amenable to consideration of the abandonment of SCOs than any other option, if a sufficient groundswell of support could be energised.

This would be my preferred angle to pursue.

So much for keeping it simple - I'm sorry.

Best Regards,

dargent.

[dargent]

Hi! Philip, I shouldn't have responded to your post at 3.00 am this morning it would have been half the size if I made it now because I would have deleted the last half of it. Sorry.
But seeing I did I would like to post a copy of this post from an experienced ebayer. This is from a Shilling related thread on the Round Table this afternoon. The bidder discussed could be innocent, I haven't investigated, but the similarities to those I described are thought provoking.
Regardless if this person is innocent or not the practices I described are still a very regular occurrence.

"Bidder 4 didn't change the final price, because Bidder 2's proxy was 9.50
Otherwise, yes I'd be suspicious of Bidder 4, due to 31 of that seller's listings bid on, yet registered for 5 years & still on 0FB"

Best Regards,

dargent.

[PhilipCohen]

Hi dargent,

As a matter of interest my communication with, and the responses from, eBay that I mentioned previously were with David Smith. He at least responded several times but was not moved by my detailed concerns about “hidden bidders”.

I agree, the matter is complex, and therefore I am not sure whether trying to keep the argument “simple” is the answer. I have been trying to motivate people on the eBay forums and elsewhere for the past year with simple expositions of the problem: most hate “hidden bidders” and have said so, but none of this “noise” (as Donahoe calls it) apparently has had any effect on eBay. Unfortunately, many eBay forum users have concentration spans limited to single sentences.

Last year, I made a much simpler submissions to the ACCC and the NSW O.F.T. I can only suspect that the O.F.T. forwarded my submission to eBay with a request for a response. All I got back from them was the nonsensical spiel about eBay being “only a notice board provider …”

This submission is however aimed at government, who are unlikely to act unless they have a clear understanding that there is a real and serious problem with eBay’s trading practices.

With respect to your comments on “sophisticated” shill bidding rings, of course you are right in saying that ordinary buyers have no chance of detecting same. As far as truly “sophisticated” solutions to that problem are concerned, I can only refer you to the links, in my OP, to the papers on shill bidding by Jarrod Trevathan and Wayne Read. They point out that such analyses may in some cases only result in strong suspicion, to the level only of “on the balance of probability”, which would undoubtedly never be sufficient proof for eBay to take any action. I also understand that eBay has actually blocked access to their API to third-party providers who were supplying such bidding analyses to eBay users! Dah! Regardless, one cannot avoid returning to the point that as it can be shown that eBay is not detecting even the most simple and blatant forms of shill bidding, how can they possibly think it appropriate to remove from us our ability to protect ourselves from same.

Indeed, I use a third-party auction processing program to keep track of all items that interest me, not just those items that I bid on, and prior to “hidden bidders” it was possible to spot not only blantant shill bidding but patterns of bidding that otherwise appeared at least suspicious. But not any more. Further, in my area of interest (flat art) sellers are disappearing and those sellers that remain are selling less which means that buyers must also be disappearing. No doubt about it, John Donahoe knows how to grow a business!

Again, I would emphasise that it is not the form of effectively bidder-specific anonymity in use in the U.S. that I have a problem with: that form offers the additional anonymity necessary to accomplish what eBay claims was the purpose of the introduction of such additional anonymity in the first place but still allows the genuine bidder to watch out for at least the (amateur) blatant shill bidder. No, it is the form of absolute anonymity (Bidder ‘n’) now in use only in Australia, U.K., Ireland and the Philippines, that I suspect is a deliberate attempt to obscure shill bidding for the cynical purpose of saving eBay resources, that is, if nothing else, at least a negligent action that is facilitating the defrauding of buyers by unscrupulous sellers.

If, as eBay suggests, it is not possible to educate dopey users to check any SCO received against their eBay messages, I agree that a better solution to the claimed problem of fraudulent SCOs would have been simply to do away with SCOs. As previously stated, the only SCO I have ever received was a genuine one (albeit from an unscrupulous seller after a failed shill bid attempt); I have never received a fraudulent SCO. (Maybe if I had been wearing a different deodorant?)

I assume you would be aware that early on (in Australia at least) eBay removed the ability for users to contact another user other than by the eBay messaging system, so that it is no longer possible for scammers to obtain the direct email address of an underbidder. Such a simple answer, and it solves the (claimed) problem without all this hidden bidders nonsense. (And, clearly there was no audit trail in place asif so, eBay could at least have been able to ascertain who had looked up the underbidder’s direct email address).

Having said all that, I think that most eBayers now suspect that the people currently in control of eBay are a bunch of arrogant, unscrupulous, disingenuous, corporate snakes (and, “arrogance” plus “unscrupulousness” will usually eventually produce “stupidity”); it’s very difficult to keep track of such snakes as they slither through the undergrowth; and that “spinning” forked tongue doesn’t help any either!

I think I have established beyond any reasonable doubt that eBay does not have the “sophisticated tools” that they claim to have for the detection of shill bidding. And therefore, again, at the end of the day, eBay should no more be entitled to facilitate others to cheat their consumers than they themselves should be allowed to cheat their consumers, no matter that they may claim that the actions that cause such facilitation may have had some other purpose.

Yes, Bidder 4 would have to be a shill, and I can only say, where are those “sophisticated tools” that eBay claims to have for the detection thereof. Actually, these eBay people are themselves stupid enough to think that all of us are even more stupid than they are.
_________________
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.

[PhilipCohen]

Revised 16 February 2008

The non detection of shill bidding by eBay

I don’t know how to quote this specific case on the eBay forums without mentioning anything that will not breach eBay’s posting rules; and, undoubtedly, that is why eBay has such rules: to stifle discussion on particular cases that expose their disingenuousness. Regardless, a summary of this particular matter needs to be published.

This particular auction is a classic example of extremely petty, but nevertheless extremely blatant, shill bidding that, probably due to its very pettiness, apparently has not been noticed by any users before and, of course, unsurprisingly to me, the supposedly “sophisticated tools” that eBay claims to have for the “proactive” detection of such shill bidding has not detected it either.

This is just one more of the so many instances of obvious shill bidding that can be quoted by experienced eBayers that clearly shows, beyond any doubt, that eBay’s claim of having “sophisticated proactive tools” for the detection of shill bidding is an outright falsehood.

Even their then apparently oxymoronic contrasting claim that they “… rely primarily upon member reports as our single most important investigative tool” is false; clearly, they rely solely on member reports!

So, what then is the basis for us believing that eBay is protecting us from shill bidding activity that has a little more sophistication and is not so readily detectable by we simple milch cows? Well, clearly, there is absolutely no basis for any such belief. And, of course, the deceptive, absolutely anonymous alias (Bidder x) in use in the U.K., Ireland and the Philippines (and until recently in Australia), does not help any either.

The question that logically follows is, how then can users believe anything that eBay ever says?

Item 300287083692

“Bidder 4”
“s***s (private)” (as of 3 February 2009)

Bidding Details:
Registered on eBay: Between 4 and 5 years.
Feedback: 0% Positive

(Zero Positive Feedback! This means that in those 4-5 years this apparently very active bidder has never completed a single purchase from anyone; not very smart: had he completed even one transaction I assume he could have been showing “100% Positive”; which, once again, shows just how deceptive eBay statistics can be, and how bidders with “private” feedback must be treated with suspicion.)

30-Day Summary:
Total bids: 52
Items bid on: 36
Bid activity with this seller: 100% (All 52 bids are on items from this seller only)

30-Day Bid History:
The green numerals in the “No. of Bids” column, I am lead to believe, indicates that the bidder is “winning” or has “won” 13 of the 30 listed items; but the seller has never supplied feedback for this bidder for any of these “wins”. The “Last Bid” column also shows that this bidder’s bids were all placed within two hours of an auction’s ending, which is what you might expect if the seller was attempting to ensure a minimum price for his items.

And, even if this “Bidder 4” did actually win some of the 13 supposed “winning/won” items listed, I would assume that he then “did not pay” and each underbidder would then receive a SCO.

This case is such a classic example of blatant shill bidding, I have archived PDF copies of the above three pages for future reference.


Postscript:

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/au/200901.shtml#2009-01-29174204
As of 3 February 2009, eighteen months after it did so in the U.S., eBay has, in Australia, (finally) replaced the absolutely anonymous alias (“Bidder x”) with the effectively, at a given moment in time, bidder-specific alias (“a***b (x)”) as used in the U.S. In the above-mentioned matter, the absolutely anonymous alias “Bidder 4” becomes “s***s (private)”. Now, I wonder why this bidder would want to keep his feedback “private”; could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that after four plus years this very well used and patently obvious “shill-bidding” ID still has “zero” feedback?


More non detection of shill bidding by eBay

Seller: lenycik; item: “CAR DENT REPAIR TOOL KIT”

I did a search through this seller’s feedback for “CAR DENT REPAIR TOOL KIT” from 12 February back to 19 January. Found 11 listings. Bidder “a***c (61)” bid on a number of those listings, $11 each time, and each item then sold to another bidder for $11.50. He missed bidding on a few of the listings and they then sold for between $4.50 and $11.00. His bidding feedback remained static at 61. This then is, beyond any doubt, another classic case of petty shill bidding. Whether this particular ID is being used on other items I did not look for: too much work involved; maybe this seller has multiple shilling IDs for different items, who knows? Only eBay, and they aren’t telling! After all this seller is a Power Seller with a 162963 feedback!

Obviously the purpose of this petty shill bidding is to maintain the price and/or generate interest in the item but avoid eBay’s higher listing fee that would be payable for a higher starting price. This buyer could just as well have started these items at $11.50 and quite probably could have sold them all for that or even more, but they are apparently more interested in minimizing eBay’s listing fee. In that respect it could be said that it is a problem created and encouraged by eBay’s fee structure. But, it is still shill bidding. And needless to say eBay does nothing about it because they don’t have any proactive tools for the prevention of such behaviour and apparently this seller has not yet been reported for shill bidding and, if they have been reported, eBay has done nothing.

Item;………………EndDate;…StartBid;ShillBid;SoldFor
110352341847; 19-02-09; $05.00; yes,
290296302487; 17-02-09; $04.74; $05.00; $11.50
310122253512; 15-02-09; $04.74; won by shill at $4.74
310122041062; 14-02-09; $04.74; $05.00; $10.50
290295444541; 13-02-09; $04.74; $00.00; $04.74
310119362221; 02-02-09; $04.74; $11.00; $11.50
110343454198; 30-01-09; $04.74; $11.00; $11.50
310117064820; 23-01-09; $04.74; $11.00; $18.50
110339549906; 21-01-09; $04.74; $11.00; $11.50
110339165234; 20-01-09; $04.74; $11.00; $11.50
110338326237; 18-01-09; $04.74; $11.00; $11.50
110338746278; 19-01-09; $04.74; $00.00; $11.00
110317996909; 19-01-09; $04.77; $11.00; $11.50
310115374715; 16-01-09; $04.74; $00.00; $06.50
310115140355; 15-01-09; $04.74; $00.00; $05.50
310113819386; 09-01-09; $04.65; $00.00; $06.11


Private Feedback

This is a device chosen by a few users to hide all details of their activity on eBay. Naturally the shill bidders with a little more grey matter will also take advantage of this device.

If you know the underlying unique ID of a bidder and access his feedback via the old “Feedback Forum”, then you will get absolutely no information except for the bidder’s feedback count; you cannot ascertain whether a bidder has been buying from only a single seller which, if was the case, could on the balance of probability suggest a shill; depending on the numeric value, the feedback count might be some indication that a bidder is possibly a shill. A very unsatisfactory mechanism from the point of view of genuine bidders.

Take the eBay seller “ozwebcollectibles” for instance. Of the items of “flat art” from this seller that have interested me, and that I have recorded in my auction processing database, a number of items have been won by “rodeoclown-2008”. Rodeoclown-2008 has “private” feedback and so I cannot see whether this buyer has been buying from other sellers or from this seller only. I can say that of all the many items that have interested me from a swag of other sellers of flat art, I have recorded rodeoclown-2008 as being the winning bidder only from ozwebcollectibles, and I have also recorded that one of those items supposedly bought by rodeoclown-2008 has been relisted for sale again by ozwebcollectibles. Further, the feedback figures don’t make sense: Rodeoclown-2008 has been a member since 23 January 2008 and currently (15 February 2009) has a feedback count of only “9”; my records indicate that he was the winning bidder for seven items from ozwebcollectibles for which no feedback has been received or given according to ozwebcollectibles’ feedback record, but feedback has been received and given for four other items from ozwebcollectibles (a total of 11 items).

See if you can find any feedback for the following seven items for which Rodeoclown-2008 was the highest bidder:

Item;………………EndDate
330279600473; 04-11-08
330258340937; 18-08-08
330217528907; 13-03-08
330215663999; 06-03-08
330215663336; 06-03-08
330213051657; 28-02-08
330210580230; 18-02-08

The above details were recorded after eBay had introduced the absolutely anonymous bidding alias (“Bidder x”) to Australia but before they also anonymised the “winning” bidder. I cannot now keep further track of this bidder as I have no way of knowing what their (new) anonymous bidding alias is. The “Feedback Forum” would therefore appear to be somewhat redundant as, under the new anonymous alias regime, it is not possible to look up a user’s feedback record without knowing the user’s underlying unique ID. Not only that but each access to this Feedback Forum is now impeded by a manual security device the only purpose of which has to be to stop third parties from programmatically accessing this information. Once again, problem solved—for eBay, that is.
_________________
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.

[PhilipCohen]

An attempt at summarizing the current situation

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200708241544222.html
The above link to the announcement on the US site in August 2007 stated that this type of alias would be consistent across all auctions, quote:

“New User ID Masking - We are replacing the current aliases (Bidder 1, Bidder 2 and Bidder 3) with a masked ID that consists of two random characters from the member's User ID – for example a***b. For any given member, this masked ID will be consistent across all auctions … for which they place bids. …”

So, in Australia as of 3 February 2009, eighteen months after it did so in the U.S., eBay has (finally) replaced the outrageous absolutely anonymous alias (“Bidder x”) with the same, effectively bidder-specific, alias (“a***b (x)”) as used in the U.S., and so we now have a chance to (additionally) watch for any suspicious activity by a common bidder over a particular seller’s other current auctions.

(But, still no announcement of a like change for the U.K. and Ireland or the Philippines!)

The next question then is, is the new alias unique? In other words are you the only one with that particular alias? That would appear doubtful as there simply are not enough two-character combinations of the characters used (lower case letters, numerals, some punctuation marks: about 1764 combinations) to give everyone a unique alias, and so we do have to look to the accompanying feedback count that, at a given point in time will be of a particular value, to be sure we are looking at the same bidder; but even then there is the possibility, albeit extremely remote, that two bidders could have identical aliases and feedback counts at some point in time. Obviously, feedback counts will increment over time so these aliases will be impossible to track with any certainty over time ...

And, why do they bother to include the (redundant) colour-coded stars that only indicate a feedback value range when we already have the actual feedback count value? Then, I never have understood much of the logic used by eBay.

This change to the bidding alias does not have any effect on eBay’s other classic seller-selected shill-bidding tool: “User ID kept private”, a device that has always been, more likely that not, used by unscrupulous vendors to hide their shill bidding activity. This device offers total anonymity of bidders, and so there is absolutely no chance of any shill bidding activity ever being detected by genuine bidders as the Bid History pages for this type of “private” listing/auction offer absolutely no information at all about competing bidders, not even any anonymous information.

Making this “private” listing/auction device even more obnoxious is the fact, demonstrable beyond any doubt, that eBay has no proactive tools for the detection of shill bidding in any form; which makes the existence of a device such as the “private” auction, where there is absolutely no possibility of genuine bidders being able to detect (and thereby report) any suspicious bidding activity, an ongoing outrageous and unscrupulous imposition on genuine buyers!

Needless to say, as it can be demonstrated, beyond any doubt, that eBay relies solely on user reports of shill bidding, buyers still have absolutely no protection from the smarter unscrupulous sellers who will be using more sophisticated forms of shill bidding.

It is therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion that eBay simply is not at all concerned about its users being defrauded by unscrupulous shill bidding sellers.

And, since eBay has blocked access (at least in Australia) to bidders’ direct email addresses, why do we need any of this increased level of bidder anonymity?

Finally, we should never forget that eBay is a publicly listed company; its only interest is to improve its “bottom line” (and thereby trigger its executive performance bonuses); all eBay users are simply sheep to be shorn for that purpose. I have no doubt that the current management team of eBay takes absolutely no notice of their customers, not even undoubted pests like me; it would appear that only a threat to their bottom line has any effect on their decision making, and you may have noticed that that bottom line is now starting to reflect the many recent errors of their ways.

Have I missed anything?
_________________
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.

[kjp55]

zzzzzz

[PhilipCohen]

Hi kjp55,

I note that you have made 1951 posts on this forum! I also note that you have revised your original above post to an even more intellectual comment. I would have to admit that I too would have revised my post if my comments had also been as illogical as yours originally were. As you now appear to be soundly asleep, I will respond only to your original post.

First of all I am predominantly a "buyer" therefore I object to eBay creating mechanisms that “aid and abet” unscrupulous shill-bidding sellers to cheat me.

Second, unless eBay is prepared to accept a lot of "buyer did not pay" excuses from shill-bidding sellers who finish up buying their own items and then want to avoid the FVF, then eBay is going to profit from a higher FVF on the resulting higher sale price.

But, you are right about one thing, eBay appears not to be concerned about shill bidding, and the investigation of user reports of suspicious bidding activity must be a real nuisance to them. But why would you then think that because eBay appears not to concerned about shill bidding that buyers should also not be concerned? Could I suggest that you have your logic generator checked out, it appears to be seriously faulty.
_________________
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.

[Tradguy]

Never ending pointless rants and mind-numbingly boring pseudo-legal nonesense is not "Online Auction News".

Ina...can this drivel get moved somewhere else?

Seems like the "Online Fraud Forum" would be a lot more topical.

Thanks!