Ebay will now hide bidder ID's for under 200.00

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Posted By: Richard L.

They announced this today,not sure when this goes into effect. The main reason explained was that too many buyers have an ID that matches their email.
Example bidder johndoe, has an email address johndoe@yahoo.com. Scammers send phony offers using the most common domains and claim many buyers are biting. If they're going to BS us, they could have come up with something more believable!

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Posted By: Matt

O fall the recent changes, this has the opportunity to be the most dangerous.

Shill bidding has the potential to take over ebay because of this. Ebay doesn't have enough man-power to properly monitor shill bidding and when it is reported, it often times is ignored.

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Posted By: Zinn

Email received today:

"Important new buyer identity protection


Keeping eBay your trusted source for great deals and truly unique finds is important to all of us. Toward this end, we're making an important change:

Soon we will no longer display the complete user IDs of people bidding on any auction-style listing. Instead, we'll use asterisks such as x***y to protect our members' identities. Sellers will continue to see complete user IDs on their listings and the winning bidder's ID will be visible to everyone after the auction ends.

We haven't provided this information on listings of $200 or higher for some time and it's been a very effective fraud deterrent for those items. For safety reasons, we're now expanding this protection to all auction-style listings.

We know many of you like to see who you're bidding against. But displaying this information makes it too easy for scammers to send out fake offers that include convincing details of your actual bidding activity on a specific listing, such as the item number, description and exact amount you bid.

In recent weeks fraudulent email offers targeting listings under $200 has surged unacceptably. To keep eBay a top shopping destination we must choose safety over visibility and nip this in the bud. We recognize for some of you this may be an unwelcome limitation but we hope you'll support our putting more muscle into fraud prevention.

If you have any questions please call Customer Service at 1-800-717-eBay (800-717-3229) or read our executive announcement.

Sincerely,

eBay Global Trust & Safety Team

P.S. Safety tip: using an email address that is similar to your user ID also makes it easier for scammers to contact you. If your user ID makes it easy to guess your email address, it's worth changing your user ID in My eBay -> My Account -> Personal Information.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

*******NEWSFLASH********
Ebay loves shill bidding. The higher the bids the more money they make...they don't care if the bidding got to a certain point because of shill bids.

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Posted By: 1880nonsports

this would be the worst decision they have ever made. I really thought they would be going in the OTHER DIRECTION! I am a bit sad and frustrated...........

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Posted By: Frank B

In defense of EBays claims - I have gotten a lot of the following phishing-type e-mails lately.
they all have a few links on them where you would click and log-in at some spoof site and I guess
from there they get your PayPal info maybe. I forward them to PayPal or EBay when I get them.
I don't like any bidders ID hidden so I don't support the new rule but they do have a problem
that it appears they are trying to address.

=================================
eBay sent this message to frankb2@aol.com
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This member has a question for you.

Do not respond to the sender if this message requests that you complete the transaction outside of eBay.
This type of offer is against eBay policy, may be fraudulent, and is not covered by buyer protection programs.
Learn More.

Dear frankb2@aol.com,

Hi , where is my FED-EX Tracking number for my WEDDING RING I see that Western Union Money Order has beep picked up.
answer me and tell me was a SCAM and i will buy other ,this it is now .. can`t change anythink i was a fool.


- rick-harley Answer the question



Item and user details
Item Title: 24K WEDDING RING 1K DIAMOND
Item Number: 230181145941
Item URL: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&am p;item=230181145941
End Date: FEB-03-08 19:03:56 PDT
From User: rick-harley (114)
100.0% Positive Feedback
Member since Feb-08-07 in United States
Location : MI, United States
Activity with rick-harley (last 90 days):I have bid on 1 items from rick-harley

This message was sent while the listing was closed.rick-harley is a seller.


Marketplace Safety Tip
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come directly from eBay and also appear in My Messages with a subject stating "You have a second chance offer...".
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Posted By: Matt

frank - I get them too; I just ignore them.

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Posted By: Anthony S.

I'm getting the exact same e-mail subject headings. I'm almost positive I'm not selling any wedding rings on Ebay, so I never open them.

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Posted By: Joann

Frank,

The thing of it is, the new ebay hidden ID policy would not stop these emails. These scammers can contact you based solely on the fact that you have a user name on ebay. It can be because you won something, because you sold something, or even because they stumbled across your name while looking for something else.

It does not take your name on a bidder list for someone to send you one of these, so I'm not sure this latest degradation of the ebay experience would even solve that problem.

Now, if it were an item similar to something you had bid on or otherwise related to your ebay activity I could almost see it. In those cases someone might very well be using a bid history to back into your interests.

But to be honest, I don't think I've ever gotten a single one of these scam emails that was tied in any way to items I'd bid on (except fake 2nd Chances). Mostly I get the same off-the-wall thing as the example above - questions about my Ghengis Khan tea cozy or whatever.

J

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Posted By: Mac Wubben

The problem that ebay is trying to fix is a minor one that can completely be alleviated by not permitting ebay ids to match email addresses. It is an incredibly easy solution. Instead, they choose to sacrifice the integrity of their auctions. Yes ebay, auction tranparancy is important to buyers...why don't you do something to protect that? I guess I should thank them...after years of suffering under from ebay addiction, I finally am over it.

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Posted By: sagard

I was thinking they would come out and say we found more bids and prices realized with the listings over $200 so we are going to reward everyone with this opportunity!

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Posted By: Larry

I like this policy because it will keep other bidders from interfering with my sales techniques and bothering the bidders who bid only on my auctions.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

They could, of course, notify bidders that it would be wise to have different id and email name. I'm not even aware that a majority of eBay users have ids that match their email names.

Besides, most sellers (whose ids you can see) are also bidders.

Much of the stuff eBay has been doing lately has favored bidders at the expense of sellers. Blocking bidder ids, however, harms bidders.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

The spamming is a red herring. If Ebay was really interested in stopping the spam it could easily do so by blocking email disclosure and barring other "member" contacts through its system except with a seller in regard to a particular item. It doesn't do so, which leads to the conclusion that spamming is a non-issue for ebay.

What Ebay is really doing with this change is making it look like it is stopping scammers and shillers so it can fend off criticism by destroying the ability of the public to track shill bidding. I suspect that the number of shill bid complaints to ebay on items over $200 has fallen dramatically since they instituted the hidden ID policy, not because there is no shilling but because no one can ID the shilling and report it to Ebay. If you can't identify shilled auctions you can't complain about the shilling, can you? And if you can't complain to Ebay about the shilling, the number of complaints Ebay receives falls, leaving Ebay free to claim that the incidence of shilling is declining when, in reality, Ebay is merely eliminating the ability of its customers to complain. It is a brilliantly Orwellian strategy: destroy the ability to complain and use the resulting lack of complaints as proof you have tackled the problem.


Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc

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Posted By: Mark L

It seems to me that we could still identify some shill biddding with the new policy since we'll presumably still be able to find out if the bidder has a short bidding history and if the bidder bids only on one seller's auctions. In any case, it will further discourage me from bidding since I will know less about my competition. I suppose it's just a matter of time before they make the seller anonymous, too.

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Posted By: Philip Cohen

In Australia, the UK, Ireland and the Philippines, eBay has obscured auction bidding to the point that genuine bidders have got absolutely no chance of detecting and thereby protecting themselves from “shill” bidding (a criminal offence in most civilised countries) by unethical vendors. Notwithstanding eBay’s statements to the contrary, this application of absolute anonymity (ie, Bidder 1, Bidder 2, etc) by eBay on these sites serves absolutely no purpose other than to deceive consumers by making even any otherwise obvious shill bidding undetectable; and the same criticism has always been applicable to eBay’s other shill bidders’ facility, “User ID kept private”. Again, notwithstanding eBay’s various pronouncements about shill bidding being banned on eBay, eBay is now effectively (and knowingly) “aiding and abetting” such shill bidders on these sites, at the expense of consumers. A lengthy critical analysis of this matter at:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6498345#6498345

I apologise in advance for the length of the above-linked “rant”. If you are an unethical shill-bidding seller or a buyer who is not concerned that on the above-mentioned national sites eBay is effectively “aiding and abetting” such shill-bidding sellers to cheat you, read no further.

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Posted By: Jason

I just snipe bid on the items I want for the price I want to pay. Hard to shill that.

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Posted By: cmoking

on the contrary, you may still be paying more than you legitimately should due to shillers.

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Posted By: Pennsylvania Ted

KING

You are absolutely correct....And, what makes this worst is that because of the higher chance
of shill bidding, unprecendented higher prices are being realized on many cards that really do
not merit it.

EBAY doesn't give a crap....they welcome this. Did they devise this system just to favor this ?

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Posted By: Rob D.

I just snipe bid on the items I want for the price I want to pay. Hard to shill that.

Jason,

I'm not picking on you, because I've seen this type of response posted many, many times before on this board, and each time I don't understand how someone can believe it.

Let's say the most I want to pay for something is $100 and that's the snipe I set. I win it, with the next two bids at $99 and $49. I might be happy to get it for my limit, but if that $99 bid was a shill bid, then I've paid twice what I should have, if the auction had been a fair one.

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Posted By: J Levine

Cannot wait to attach my name to the first class action suit against ebay...

Joshua

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Posted By: davidcycleback

Rob and cmoking are correct. Many shilled auctions are shilled up on day one, and a last second bid doesn't protect the the winner from these shilled bids.

Also realize that the technique of some shillers is to shill up the price high-- with the top bid or bids being the seller's-- in the hope that someone places a last second bid to top all. If a legitimate bid is not placed, the lot will be relisted to try again. This explains why you see obviously fake cards with incredible bidding action on day two or three of four-- where a simultaneous PSA or SGC example is getting a fraction of the bids and price. Most to all of the bids on the fake cards are shills. Whoever snipe wins the fake placed his flag on a mountain of shills. It's possible he was the only real bidder, even though he won the card $200 above minimum.