As a result of the increased usage of bidder lists on high priced auctions for phishing and fraud, eBay introduced the “Safeguarding member ID’s” policy. Whenever an auction gets bids over $200, the bidders’ member ID’s become hidden.
Because of that, many buyers that are familiar with eBay believe that it could lead to an increase in shill bidding. Shill bidding is the practice of sellers using multiple accounts or friends and associates accounts to bid the price of an item up. While some of the shill bidders get caught by eBay, many of them are caught by wary bidders who report the infraction. Hiding the Member ID’s makes that nearly impossible.
While it is a good idea to try and protect the bidders on high price auctions from fraud, it’s also a risk for increased fraud on site as well. It may end up being a wash. Reduced second chance fraud and phishing may result in an increase in shill bidding fraud.
[tags]ebay,shill bidding,safeguarding member ids,fraud[/tags]
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February 8th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I think that having blind auctions would prevent shill bidding, since with the blind auction the prices do not go up with each bid and only when the auction ends do you find out who the highest bidder is.
Unfortunately since eBay gets a percentage of the sale price, they have very little incentive to implement a blind auction system.