RE: [Thinkpad] Possible hijacked Ebay account

> From: Ellis Weiner
> Can I ask some touchingly stupid questions? What's so
> obvious? I've never bought anything on Ebay (or sold it),
> but, aside from the fact that this guy has NO feedback from
> buyers, what's the giveaway that tells you all he's bogus?
> I ask this so that everyone one else on the list who is too
> embarrassed to ask, doesn't have to. Thanks, guys.

Don't feel embarrassed; I always respect people who are willing to ask
questions like this.

The thing to look at is the "seller's other items":

http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=osieight

With no previous selling history, this user suddenly has over two hundred
big-ticket items for sale, all "BRAND NEW! BEST OFFER!". They are all
one-day listings that expire within a few minutes of each other. In fact,
many of the items expire within seconds of each other. Also, every item is a
private auction ("High bidder: User ID kept private"). This is done to
prevent other eBay users from contacting the bidders to warn them about the
scam.

A more recent clue: The thief was foolish enough to list a number of the
items with "Buy it now", which gave one intrepid eBay user an opportunity to
"buy" those items with the express purpose of leaving immediate negative
feedback:

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws1/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=osieight

Unfortunately, this isn't doing quite as much good as it could, because all
15 of the negative feedbacks that were just posted are from the same user,
so they only knocked down the feedback score by one point.

-Mike

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Received on Mon Sep 6 19:03:21 2004