Warning from eBay:

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by rdwyer

I got a weird email from eBay today. It was warning me that a particular auction was ending which I had looked at. Nothing more. It was for a altered reprint that I had no interest in. They're definately spying on their users.

In the last couple of weeks I have received countless emails from them about auctions I have looked at, my OWN auctions LOL, and others I am sure I haven't.

[RedsFan1941]

sometimes you bite the 'bay, sometimes the 'bay bites you

[frankbmd]

After one sale, Pay Pal gives you a buyer's contact info. There you go.

[Peter_Spaeth]

I still see many sellers with their phone number right in their listings, by the way.

[TheNightmanCometh]

Why don't you tell the seller just to come here and create an account. I'm sure Leon would like that very much :-)

I'm sure you can write "Net54" in an email and it not get flagged.

[Sean]

Originally Posted by TheNightmanCometh

I'm sure you can write "Net54" in an email and it not get flagged.

I've done this a few times with no problem.

[toledo_mudhen]

You were tagged by they their increasingly sophisticated auto bots. Nothing to do with the guy on other end.

So yea - it appears the easy thing to do is include phone number in listing - Who Knew?

BTW - I have in the past, been able to send contact info via messaging system in the form of pic (JPEG, GIF, etc)

[clydepepper]

I have about sixty business cards for seller with whom I have dealt. Most of them contain non-EBAY contact details.

Once again, the low-tech approach has it's day.

[ALR-bishop]

Many sellers have their own web sites with contact info.

[EvilKing00]

Originally Posted by TheNightmanCometh

Why don't you tell the seller just to come here and create an account. I'm sure Leon would like that very much :-)

I'm sure you can write "Net54" in an email and it not get flagged.

I sometimes ask if they are a member

[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