ebay practices (I was bidding on a lathe)

A lot of people are getting fake 2nd chance offers. If you've already bid on something, and the offer looks legit, you click their link, and give away your password at the bogus site. That's what ebay is trying to fight.

eBay nowadays does not disclose userids of bidders who bid above 200 dollars, except to the sellers of the auction in question.

They did it because of incessant fake second chance offers that are spammed by some idiot scammer from Belotesti in Ilfov county, Romania.

No idea on your watchlist issues, it seems to work for me.

That is definitely true.

That is probably true. I'm not that easy. My snipped-for-privacy@lycos.com address fills me in on just about every internet scam there is out there.

Ebay and paypal are probably getting tired of my forwards to spoof@ whichever.

However, it looks like hiding bidders could be used to help sellers use a shill. I know that happens.

Wes S

When did that start? I have never made a bid over 3 figures before so this is my first time running into this practice.

Wes S

You spend a lot of time on ebay. Did you notice ebay was using a self-signed certificate for a few minutes around 9:00 eastern time yesterday instead of the verisign one? Needless to say, I didn't log in.

Wes S

I can't say when it started, but I noticed it back in early December.

I was putting my son to bed at that time, I think, and then I was mostly finishing up my trailer, so I did not notice, sorry. I saw that happen before though.

EBay had the right model years ago, and been degrading it ever since over a false model of "security". Anonymizing bidders on high-value auctions is the latest in a series of such stupid moves. Earlier ones include destroying user id's that were email addresses, making you log in every day, and bloating every single blasted page with Java/Ajax/advertising.

Bless Google for their original simple HTML model.

When using HTTPS, it is common for a certificate issued by someone like verisign or some other firm to authenticate that the party you are dealing with is who you think they are. There is no point in having an encrypted communication with someone that isn't actually who you think they are.

This link can give you a thumbnail of what I am talking about.

Wes S

Public key cryptography is a form of encryption so that you use two keys that are NOT the same to encrypt and decrypt. You can encrypt with A and decrypt with B, or vice versa. Think of it as:

B(A(text)) = A(B(Text))

One of them is made public.

A certificate is a public key signed by some authority. Anyone can sign a certificate, you see. And anyone can sign their own.

If you want to trust a certificate, you need to have it signed by someone or authority. Verisign is such an authority.

You can also have Verisign sign another certificate that says that Company X can sign certificates. So you can have a certificate signed by X, which is signed by Verisign.

That's a certificate chain.

To give a little more detail, a certificate contains text information like name, expiration date, and public key. The certificate signed calculates the one-way hash of this string (it's like a checksum, but nearly impossible to reverse engineer) and then this hash is encrypted with the private key of the authority. This is the "signature"

A computer can look at the certificate, calculate the hash, and decrypt the "signature" inside the certificate with the public key. The self-calculated has and the "signature" have to match to be authentic.

If you go to eBay, and the certificate is self-signed, then you really can't know that it IS eBay. It could be Pirate Bay.

To make it even scarier, a hacker can flood your router with the Name to IP address translation, and use false information, so when you type "eBay.com" and log onto eBay - it could be a bogus site.

I don't see any ads - except for a small 1/2 inch box near the top. I'm using FireFox with AdBlock Plus.

And I believe..that one of the worst shill offenders...is ReXXXable Txxls, based on some previous and recent experiences with them.

Gunner

"Deep in her heart, every moslem woman yearns to show us her t*ts" John Griffin

I thought that you had a good relationship with them... I would not be surprised at all to find out that what you say is true.

What sort of experiences did you have? I've wondered about the possibility myself as they usually seem to bring top dollar for the sort of stuff I follow, but many members of the PM forum seem to think that they don't shill. They do have a reputation there for buying up most of the items at auctions out their way, which might also explain the prices their auction listings seem to fetch.

Mike

I do..of those running their store front..its the Ebay thing that is questionable. They still Ebay good stuff..its the way some of the bidding and bidders shape up, if one follows some of the auctions and does some check ups on the winning bidders histories.

This has been WIDELY discussed in the industry btw..its not something I dreamed up. In fact..some other folks suggested I do some looking at the auctions ...and some unpleasent trends have appeared. Shrug...they may well be as clean as the driven snow. But some really wierd things....

Gunner

Political Correctness

A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Ive personally seen an item, worth some money, but not particularly desireable, bid on, then have a single second buyer, get it at a higher bid..that buyer having bought up about 40 items in a 2 week period..many of which are NOT related, Say a used vise, a host of other machine shop related items..then some electronic test equipment etc etc..and not bidding with any other seller. And the bidder suddenly appears with no history of bidding on anyone elses stuff, then disappearing just as suddenly.

Or a number of moderately priced machine or welding equipment, having no one else willing to bid any big money on..being sold to a similar buyer..and then finding the same machine reposted several months later, and then again..and then again.

Being the same machine noted while visiting the premises. One failure to pay or pickup is possible..but not 4-5 of them in a row.

It could well be coincidence and they are as innocent as the driven snow.....

Follow some auctions and check for yourself and form your own conclusions.

Ive lost far too many auctions against a single bidder who does as described above. As have others Im aware of.

Shrug..Id hate to think it was intentional. They seem to be really nice folks and they have good stuff.

Gunner

Political Correctness

A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Hey, it was your governor who said "ware zair is smoke zair is fire". I had a similar experience with a seller on Ebay. They sold the same items over and over (and sold only through Ebay) so you wouldn't expect to see the price vary much. I noticed a pattern over a few weeks that one person seemed to bid on most of them, yet never win -- although his bids frequently exceeded the price the item had sold for on other occasions.

I complained to Ebay, not really expecting anything to come of it. Then I got an e-mail from the shill bidder, asking why I was accusing him of fraud and saying that he really was trying to buy the item, but kept coming up short and forgetting to bid again.

Coincidentally he stopped bidding and the prices dropped back to close to the minimum starting bid, as you'd expect for something that's offered constantly.

Like you, I see too much there to believe it's all coincidence.

Gunner wrote: