Ebay Bidders?

[Mark Mac]

Has anyone else noticed these buyers on Ebay? There are perhaps dozens of them - the names are all combinations of a letter or number followed by 3 asterisks and and end with a letter or number.

0***5
4***l
7***e
z***m
7***7
h***b
i***i
c***u
e***r
r***e

to name a few. Are these all Sudek companions, or a new "organization"? They all have relatively low feedback numbers and are bidding on a LOT of photos... There are many photos coming that I fear will be bid beyond my reach. I know this has been talked about too much, but this is pretty aggravating. To the point that I am not even putting many photos on my watch list.

[entasis]

new ebay police

it's a new eBay policy to protect bidder identity. used to be only for items that went over $200. now it's all auctions...here's the email for anyone that missed it:

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.

[Hank C.]

Also discussed a bit in this thread:
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=272119

see post #11 and onwards...

best
Hank

[Adrian]

Interesting. I'm watching a photo auction that has one bid at $1.99, the bidder is 7***9. Does this mean he has placed a bid on this photo that is $200 or more?

[entasis]

used to be only for items that went over $200. now it's all auctions

[Adrian]

Out of all the auctions I'm watching with bids, one is at €6.50 and the high bidder is shown, there are four others with bids at $1.99 where the bidder is shown as o***f etc etc and on one of my auctions that has a couple of bids the bidder/s are shown by their eBay name....?

[TH0791]

So now sellers will find it easier to use false bidders

[Rich Payne]

How do eBay expect us now to report shill bidding ? They obviously don't.

eBay.uk still seems free of this problem on lower value items.

I know from watching a US auction where a friend was bidding that the first and last characters shown by eBay bear no relation whatsoever to the user name so there are no clues to be found there. His user name showed until a second bid was entered and then it became anonymous.

Maybe we should all start cancelling bids when an item becomes anonymous on the basis that we cannot then see if the seller is bidding up ?

[Richard]

Ebay cares about one thing only, making money. They could care less if items are fake, shill bidding happens, fraud is committed, deals go bad or anything else. They will pay lip service to "protecting" their members but in the end they would sell their grandmother to white slavers if they could turn a buck.
Richard V

[bikerboyzx6r]

Guys, I understand what you say but............... If you put in the MAX you want to pay, and then you win it, regardless who bids, then your a winner! If it goes over and the ebayer does it, then it has to go back on for sale or you get a second chance offer!
Ebay isnt 100% safe & we all know it, but what you going to do about it? Ebay is a multi billion £ company!
Dan.