Suspicious eBay listings

[Cedars]

Good news from eBay if you haven't already heard!

Love 'em or hate 'em, it's still eBay, belss their larcenous little hearts!

This is from http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200601261616502.html
Making it easy to detect policy violations
One of the most important ways we learn about listings that violate our policies is through reports from other Community members. You've told us that the process for reporting suspicious activity has been too cumbersome. So to make it easier for members to send us these reports, in the spring of 2006, every item page will have a "Report this Item" link at the bottom of the page. This link will bypass the Contact Us flow and take you to a list of possible reasons why a listing needs to be brought to our attention. It will save you valuable time and help us review the listing quickly.
I want to add a note here to thank our members who report suspicious activity on the site to us. With more than 5 million active listings on any given day, we need – and truly appreciate – your help in keeping the marketplace safe.

[azflycaster]

Ebay wants to make it easier for us to do thier job?

OK, this is how it will work. You see an ad which you think is a fraud sale or maybe even a compromised site. You click "report this item" at the bottom of the page. It then takes you to a "verify your idenity" page that requests your id and password. Is it a valid page or a duplicate created by the seller to capture your id / password. I would think this would create a new form of thieft which I will now call ebay phishing.

Reporting a scam only takes a minute, but why take the chance of linking to it from the scammers page? The bottom line is ebay needs to act in a timely manor when these things are reported and do so police work of their own. Ebay is not a free service.

[Jim Jarzabek]

So ebay acknowledges that fraud is so widespread that they are making it "easier" to have the paying customers police their website?
Why not use some of the hundreds of millions of profit dollars ebay makes to build a safe site to buy and sell?.....
Anyone notice the increased advertising campaign aimed at trying to get people to shop on ebay?
Any business that does not protect their customers from fraud does not serve their customers' best interest....
Hopefully, ebay is on the way out.

[Ohanastar]

I wasn't sure about this one but I thought I'd throw it out to you'all. This morning I searched EBAY using the word "airstream" and at first it listed around 200 items (about normal) for my search. But, as I was scrolling from one page to another it suddenly jumped to around 500 listings. I thought it was a glitch 'till I got to around Page 6 of the listings and I hit a huge section entirely of "BUY IT NOW" listings. Some of the items I believe I've seen before but I can't recall if they sold or not. The seller locations are all different, but some say their locations oddly (the Eastern United States) and the listings are posted for very long times, some up to 78 days. The fact that they all appeared seemingly at the same time raised a warning flag, too. I emailed Ebay but I thought I'd just toss my concerns out there to you'all to see if I'm way off base. I'd hate for somebody to get conned...

[Ohanastar]

I just checked back and found all of those suspicious items now are gone. Ebay responded quickly but it does make me wonder what the scam was. Since they were all "BUY IT NOW" items I wonder if someone was trying to gain access to PayPal accounts...