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The eBay Identity Crisis

07/09/07

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3 comments

Yesterday I had the displeasure of going through what many thousands of eBay users have experienced in the past; having an auction won by a fraudster.

I am selling a mobile phone on my brother's behalf and mobile phones, it would seem, are items that scammers are particularly interested in.

In my case, the auction was won by an eBay user registered in the United States who's account had been compromised by a fraudster based in Nigeria (there's nothing like living up to stereotypes, eh?).

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Red flags were flying the second the auction had ended as I had specified clearly that I would only ship to the UK, and sure enough a couple of hours later eBay cancelled the auction and removed all history - presumably the real account holder had received emails informing them they had won an auction that they had no knowledge of.

Annoying that I couldn't now make a second chance offer to the next highest bidder, but understandable - they had been bid up by someone with no intention of paying.

I waited for the the inevitable emails from the scammer - I assumed there would either be a message direct from them, or a message purporting to be from PayPal. Sure enough, a spoof PayPal message landed in my inbox yesterday morning.

What impressed me was the quality and sophistication of the email - this wasn't a one image email like those often seen requesting various bank details. This was an exact copy of PayPal's legitimate emails.

The crux of the email, of course, was to get me to ship the item before receiving payment - not going to happen and I'm amazed that people fall for it. Obviously some do or the scammers wouldn't bother.

I later received a second email from PayPal followed by an email from the auction winner with a copy of their auction won message from eBay.

What perturbs me about this entire episode is not the inconvenience, rather that now this cretin has my real name, email address and home address, all handed to them on a plate by eBay.

Now I'm not entirely sure what eBay could do differently as this information is required by legitimate buyers to complete a transaction. In all likelihood all that will happen is my email address ending up on various spam mailing lists, which is not a big problem really.

However, that unscrupulous individuals are able to obtain this kind of personal information so easily is more disturbing.

Does anyone have any thoughts, or their own experience with this kind of thing?

Comments are closed for this journal entry.

Steve Tucker

7 September, 2007

I don’t ever use eBay, but I’ve heard of this sort of thing happening a lot. I think it’s one of the reasons I stay away from eBay and the like.

I wouldnt worry too much about him/her having your name and address though Simon. I dont really see what someone could do with such details, other than send you junk mail, etc. Nevertheless though, its really shit. You shouldnt have to put up with those type of people.

Simon

7 September, 2007

Thankfully, Finland’s equivalent to eBay, Huuto.net, hasn’t been infiltrated by spammers from any continent as of yet. I think this is mostly to do with the fact that, outside of Finland, nobody can understand the wretched language!

I’ve used this this Finnish service and there’s been no problems as of yet. Maybe it pays to speak obscure languages… I’d imagine websites that are spammed a lot could benefit by being written in Finnish also; especially those mail and contact forms! Still, myself and Mr. Kitson seemed to have found a decent solution to these problems (for the time-being).

As for eBay, oh well. Maybe it’s time for a smaller, more localised service, you know, for local people! After all, Simon, you did say that you were only interested in shipping locally. Besides, giants always attract an unsavoury crowd (Microsoft?).

kitsimons

10 September, 2007

@Steve: You don’t use eBay? You’re a rare breed :-)
As with anything else, a few bad eggs manage to ruin everything for the majority… I’m not really concerned about the information they have, but it’s an eye-opener as to how easily one could obtain that sort of information if you really wanted to.

@Si: You’re lucky in Finland that Huuto.net managed to establish itself before the eBay monster rolled into town. It’s swings and roundabouts at the end of the day. Huuto is a smaller and intrinsically safer environment, whilst eBay offers anything and everything you could hope to find.

I doubt anything could compete with eBay in the UK now though.

Kitsimons...

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...is the online home of Simon Kitson, a web designer with a healthy enthusiasm for standards-compliant, accessible design and a penchant for blogging about nothing in particular.

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