As eBay only provides a 30 day look back and there is no way to find the IP address of the seller and bidders from the information provided by eBay, how does this recent change - "... makes it harder to detect fraudulent bidding too,...". The only thing that I have seen is multiple bids from the same individual. That just looks dumb to me. To make shill bidding work there needs to be a minimum of 2 bidders, at least one of which is the shill. How are you going to RELIABLY detect this? If is is poorly done it is obvious but if it is done right you will never know. The only way to tell is to have the IP of the seller and all bidders then if the bids from two bidders or the seller and one bidder originate from the same IP you would be correct in suspecting something. In my opinion this is a tempest in a very small tea pot. I find the highly inflated "shipping and handling" charges much more egregious and revealing as to the ethics of the seller. Rich On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 22:48:30 -0800 (PST), Donald Dellmann wrote: >Generally in the past, a "private auction" was used for items where it was likely that people wouldn't want their friends to know what they were buying. Prime examples would be items of a sexual or fetishistic nature, or unusual items out of the "mainstream" of society. Applying it to auctions in general does protect bidders, I can see eBay's point, but it also makes it harder to detect fraudulent bidding too, so I have to lean towards the side of opposition to the new policy. > > Don >Daniel Melvin <dan at old-phonographs.com> wrote: > I have always avoided auctions that hide bidders. I agree with Jeff's >suspicions. I just don't trust sellers that hide things. It just feels >wrong. I suppose many people have had OK transactions this way. It's not for >me though. >Dan >----- Original Message ----- >From: >To: >Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 5:57 PM >Subject: Re: [Phono-L] Protected Bidding on ebay! >> >> In a message dated 1/16/2007 4:13:48 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, >> jeffryy at prevea.com writes: >> >> Has anyone bid, or won anything with these bidder identification >> protected >> auctions? The seller of the Zonophone-A is doing that with that particular >> auction. >> >> >> >> ==================== >> eBay has always had an option for keeping bidders private, but this is not >> the case here. Recently eBay instituted a new policy whereby anything that >> tops >> $200 becomes "protected." It's not the seller's choice. Instead of showing >> bidder IDs it shows "Bidder 1, " "Bidder 2" etc. This is an attempt to >> combat >> rampant fraud since so many scammers are sending fake "second chance" >> notices >> to underbidders. By hiding bidders on higher-priced items they hope to >> cut >> down on these scams. It will also prevent people from offering similar >> items >> to underbidders by private message. >> >> On the bid history page you can view some statistics on the bidders. >> Perhaps >> the most telling is the one that shows what percent of the bidder's total >> bid activity is with the particular seller. In the Zonophone auction, for >> example, the current high bidder has 42% of activity with the seller. >> That's >> certainly very high. It also shows the categories the bidder has been >> active in, >> so it's very easy to see if a person who spends most of his time buying >> Christmas ornaments is suddenly a player on high-end collector >> phonographs. >> >> The new system is far from ideal, and I confess I liked to see what other >> people were bidding on. But by the same token, I never liked airing my >> own bid >> history publicly so I guess I'm a hypocrite at heart! Overall I think >> this >> new system will have more pros than cons. (And it will hopefully stifle >> some of >> the con artists, pun intended....) >> >> Best regards, >> Rene Rondeau >> _______________________________________________ >> Phono-L mailing list >> http://phono-l.oldcrank.org >_______________________________________________ >Phono-L mailing list >http://phono-l.oldcrank.org >_______________________________________________ >Phono-L mailing list >http://phono-l.oldcrank.org