How to avoid eBay feedback scam
05/09/2006 21:20 Filed in: Shopping
I wrote earlier on eBay feedback scam. By using a large number (300+) of fake accounts, these eBay sellers could generate apparently high feedback rating. If you wonder why they can get away and not get suspended, (eBay user with -4 rating will be suspended) - after all genuine buyers will ultimately leave negative feedback when they didn’t get the goods delivered?
Their trick is to bury the negative rating in a series of fake positive ratings. Like the rating above, if this guy sold to 133 genuine buyers, who had left neutral and negative feedbacks. Normally eBay’s mechanism would have the seller suspended because of number high number of negative feedback. By performing 2797 fake transactions between himself and the fake accounts he owned - leaving positive feedback to himself, the overall rating remains high. The negative feedbacks messages were also typically pushed to the several pages back in the feedback list and not get read by other potential buyers.
To protect yourself from this kind of fraud, you should check feedback rating of the seller that
- “feedback score” should be mostly positive.
- “member since” should be long established account. If you have to trade with newly established account, proceed with caution.
- “item #” should be visible. Ensure that the seller does not list items as “private”. (these seller trade $0.01 e-books with his own fake accounts to avoid eBay’s final fee. Obviously he don’t want you to know that the positive feedbacks were on very low value items).
- “Past 6 months” should have low neutral or negative feedbacks (<10).>feedback of some of these users who had left positive feedbacks. If those items were either listed as “private” or items like $0.01 e-book or poster image, you should not trade with the seller.
eBay feedback scam
03/09/2006 21:22 Filed in: Shopping
The feedback system is the cornerstone of eBay. Users came to rely on the number of postive feedbacks to decide whether to deal with a paricular buyer or seller. Recently there are increasing number of cases of of feedback rating manipulating on eBay as reporting by Fortinet and also The Register.
The problem is that there are now many merchants selling $0.01 e-books, poster image, or whatever, the real agenda is the trading of postive feedbacks, as positive feedbacks are automatically returned at the end of these $0.01 transactions.
The scam start by creating users that buy these $0.01 e-books from different traders. Typically each of these fake users would buy between 10 to 20 of these $0.01 e-book to get the a star, to make this appears like a seasoned eBay buyer.
When there are enough of these fake accounts ready, an merchant account could be created to perform transactions with these fake user accounts.
See this example of an account with transactions (Supposedly trading watches) at the rate of one transaction every 5 seconds !!
Transactions details were marked as private but since individiual accounts were all different, the scam looks like a genuine feedback list. The only give away might be the transactions between the merchant accounts and these fake users account were completed at very close interval, suggesting that some kind of programmatic approach were used to complete thse transacations.
When the merchants have built-up more than 500+ and 100% positive feedback, they could start to market high value items and start to pocket some fast money from buyers who simply look at the overall positive feedback ratings !!
The problem is that there are now many merchants selling $0.01 e-books, poster image, or whatever, the real agenda is the trading of postive feedbacks, as positive feedbacks are automatically returned at the end of these $0.01 transactions.
The scam start by creating users that buy these $0.01 e-books from different traders. Typically each of these fake users would buy between 10 to 20 of these $0.01 e-book to get the a star, to make this appears like a seasoned eBay buyer.
When there are enough of these fake accounts ready, an merchant account could be created to perform transactions with these fake user accounts.
See this example of an account with transactions (Supposedly trading watches) at the rate of one transaction every 5 seconds !!
Transactions details were marked as private but since individiual accounts were all different, the scam looks like a genuine feedback list. The only give away might be the transactions between the merchant accounts and these fake users account were completed at very close interval, suggesting that some kind of programmatic approach were used to complete thse transacations.
When the merchants have built-up more than 500+ and 100% positive feedback, they could start to market high value items and start to pocket some fast money from buyers who simply look at the overall positive feedback ratings !!