Posted By:
boxingcardmanThe 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.
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