Article about FAKE in Avantoure Magazine

I was recently interviewed for an article about eBay fraud in the UK magazine Avantoure. You can read it here.

The article focuses on eBay's new policy of hiding the identity of bidders who are bidding on auctions with prices higher than $200. eBay made the change to combat scammers who troll the site and make fraudulent offers to people bidding on high-dollar items. I'm sure this has been a very real problem on the site.

While most casual eBay users probably didn't even notice this change, a vocal minority of avid eBayers believe it will make shill bidding easier. I have to admit that this may be true. I was caught for shill bidding not by eBay, but by skeptical eBay users who took a close look at who was bidding on my auctions and found suspicious patterns. When a New York Times reporter followed up on this research and published a report on it, the world took notice.

If no one had been able to see who'd been bidding on my auctions, I may never have been caught.

Obviously, things have changed a lot since then, and I'm sure eBay is much better at detecting shill bidding than it was back in 2000. But I'm just as sure that shill bidding still exists, and crafty sellers who are determined to do it have found ways to do it that escape the auction site's detection mechanisms. eBay users who scan the site looking for it claim they still find evidence of it on a regular basis. One of the biggest sellers on eBay UK admitted to it on tape.

I will never join the ranks of those who think eBay doesn't care about shill bidding because it contributes to the company's bottom line. eBay doesn't want its site to be thought of as a haven for trickery, and it relies on its reputation as a safe place to trade. This latest move was a difficult trade-off, an attempt to quell one type of fraud by limiting the ability of users to spot another type of fraud. A victim of shill bidding may end up paying more for an item than he should, but he isn't being coaxed into sending money for an item that will never arrive.

Ultimately, users need to protect themselves. If you don't want to be a victim of shill bidding, determine how much you're willing to pay for an item and then place a single bid for that amount near the end of the auction. Following this simple rule will prevent sellers from bidding against you with artificial bids.