[Stampsfan]

Picking up email addresses, as well as certain keywords (such as "dot", "period", "at") is relatively simple to do. Plus these types of procedures will be improved by developers all the time. However, they would be susceptible to automatically and incorrectly picking up messages with no intent at bypassing eBay. However, rest assured that anything flagged will not be sent on to the intended recipient.

I read an article years ago from an ex eBay developer, who was there at the beginning. Like many ill-informed companies, eBay (according to the article) decided to go offshore for system development and support. His take at the time (so far a little unfounded) is that the infrastructure of the entire application is so old that eventually it will crater. In the industry, "held together with duct tape and binder twine" is sometimes the explanation. They have apparently built new code on top of old code, and at some time it will crater. Think of it like a car... you can only fix the old one up for so long before you need a completely new car (system).

For me, weird things do sometimes happen... bids that don't go through, my Watch list disappearing, etc. But overall, their system still seems to have held up so far.


Full disclosure:
I have never worked for eBay or written or deployed auction house software.
I am a computer scientist and Solutions Architect, specializing in systems and database development, implementations, and integration.

Regards...
Bob