<link removed>
Ebay uses IP addresses, cookie tracking as well as embedded image loading in emails
in order to try to suspend accounts that are associated with other suspended accounts.

In my opinion these tactics are very invasive and sleazy. I never have liked ebay. Now
I hate them even more (even though I am not a seller)

These are all standard practices, and the stated use here is obviously legitimate.

I wonder how many of them LQ use to ban accounts that are associated with other banned accounts.

Would you be opposed to LQ using them to ban accounts that are associated with other banned accounts, if bad behavior makes it necessary?

Not a big fan of the tactic. It is prone to false positives
since most IP addresses are dynamic. Cookies are more reliable
but can be subverted and again leads to false positives on a shared computer.

Email address checks are almost always used but with web mail people can easily get around
it.

There are no surefire way to get it right every time, but if a method is prone
to false positives and leads to inappropriate bans then it is not acceptable.

Also compound this with the fact that ebay is known to suspend accounts "at the drop of a hat"

And did you seriously just link to a forum whose purpose is to circumvent ebay's policies/bans/suspensions?

Forgive me if I don't see ebay as the sleazy one here.

They're almost certainly used in combination to generate a probability score. That's how the Valve anti-cheating system (that was controversial for about a day) worked.

I'll remove the link. But ebay is prone to banning people over the most minor reasons.
Its to the point you can apparently get a "policy violation" by uploading a picture
with insufficent resolution.


When something gets to big it tends to turn evil. One of the reasons I support OSS
is because it is generally a little better in that regard.

I also avoid valve/steam stuff. The only reason I have steam installed is because of
some free game codes I received with a hardware purchase.

I stopped using Paypal as soon as Ebay took it over. Thankfully, I've never dealt with Ebay.

"Website uses a variety of techniques to try to identify problematic / defrauding users", considerably less sensational than "EBAY INVADES YOUR PRIVACY OMG!!!!!" isn't it.

If anyone is worried about companies using cookies, IP address heuristics, e-mail address matching, "disposable" e-mail address lists, IP ranges of known "spam" countries, open proxy lists, etc. to protect their business and customers then perhaps they should just get off the internet altogether.

If that is is really why they suspended it. But in actuality ebay is known for suspending accounts for the most trivial of reasons.
It has little to do with protecting their customers in most cases. Of course if a seller is scamming/not shipping then it is a legit reason.

But in most cases that isn't true. Never have liked ebay. Now I have more reasons. I only buy there if there isn't another option and
now I know that I will never sell there

It is quite interesting to me that eBay has found itself evolved into more of a reseller than an auctioneer. When the "Buy It Now!" feature came along, a very large percentage of people began to use it. Hence, the transaction became an ordinary sale.

I used to make my living on Ebay. I quit, back in '08, with 100% feedback and never a policy violation or anything, because I didn't agree with Ebay's increasingly sick policies and practices.

Ebay suspends many fine small sellers, who have never had a single problem; while they conveniently "erase" the bad feedback of many big mega-sellers who engage in shady practices; and who are constantly in violation of Ebay's own policies.

Ebay has created a system in which there is NO protection for legitimate sellers. If you list anything of value on Ebay, there is a very good chance that you will lose it to a fraudster, because Ebay will always take the buyer's word for it, and never the seller's. e.g. you sell a computer on Ebay. Buyer receives it and claims that it does not work. He sends you back a box with a rock in it. As long as that box has delivery confirmation, Ebay will snatch his money back from you and refund it to him. You now have no computer and no money. Criminals make a living doing that on Ebay- often selling the very item they stole from you, right on Ebay- and now, because negative feedback can no longer be left for buyers, such crooks have free reign; and there is no way to warn other sellers; and unlike Amazon, Ebay does not review and limit the number of returns a buyer can do; and even if they did, there is nothing to prevent anyone from just opening another buyer account- since Ebay does not verify IDs for buyer accounts.

Or maybe that buyer will just take needed parts out of your computer, and return the computer with his old parts installed; or keep your computer and send you back the one he has of the same model, with a broken screen....

Ebay has become the worldwide web grab-bag.

Yes, there are plenty of fraudulent sellers too- but it is much easier to be a fraudulent buyer, thanks to Ebay's policies- so fraud against sellers now proliferates.

You can report flagrantly fraudulent listings (like: for cars that do not exist) and they can be full of Ebay policy violations, and Ebay does nothing; yet if your competitor reports a perfecly legit ad of yours, with no violations [He can claim your merchandise is counterfeit, etc.] Ebay can't remove it fast enough, and even punish you for it!

Some poor unemployed single parent trying to make a few bucks is penalized or suspended because she only ships twice a week- and specifies that fact in her ads.....while junk sellers in China nad hong Kong take a month to deliver, and hide that fact...but it is perfectly O-K, and Ebay will even remove the bad feedback when people complain.

15 years ago, Ebay was great. Today, it REEKS! I now feel the same way about Ebay as I do about Microsoft.

And don't even get me started on PayEnemy!

One thing: If Ebay can do all these invasive things to manage sellers- and often unjustly- why can they not at least use those same tools to control fraudulent buyers, who make their living scamming stuff off of Ebay; and even selling that stuff right on Ebay? It's hard to start illegitimate seller accounts, because positive ID and financial info is needed for them- so even without all the forensics, it would be very hard; but on the other hand, Ebay requires nothing but a valid email address for a buyer account- so worse case scenario, even if a scumbag's buyer account gets banned, all he has to do is reformat/use a different partition or different computer, and he is back in business. How a major corporation with 10's or millions of users can do business like that, is mind-boggling...and sick!

I think that there are, in fact, many "companies of the late-1990's" that will find themselves dying-off because people who are much more cynical than they ever were have found a way to "game" their original system.

For example: eBay, CraigsList, and AngiesList all founded their businesses on one key assumption: that the people(?) who presented themselves as "customers" of their service really were the "customers" that they claimed to be, and really did have a legitimate-customer's purposes in mind and therefore could be counted-on to behave as a real customer would do in "a real, earnest, retail transaction."

They know exactly what to do when "a customer" (whom they implicitly presume to be legitimate ...) lodges a complaint against "a seller" (whom they are quite willing to presume to be a schnook). However, yes, it has never figured into their now-multimillion-dollar business equation what to do if "the customer (sic)" is the one who now is deliberately gaming the system.

The problem that is truly faced by all of these now-gigantic online entities is that none of them have ever met, nor will they actually meet, any of the two parties to the online transactions which they seek to facilitate. It is, therefore, necessary for them to favor one of the two over the other. However, this leads to the (very obvious, in hindsight ...) consequence that the "favored" party, by deliberate subterfuge, deceit or outright fraud, would intentionally seek to reverse the situation.

All of these "giant companies" founded their business models, unwittingly (and naïvely, as it turns out) on the presumption that they could be "merely the shopkeeper," thus "merely a facilitator" of an "honorable transaction" that, if it should prove to be dishonorable, would nonetheless reliably prove to be the dishonor of only the seller-party and never the buyer.

Well, in the paper-world that all of these newfangled things replaced, a decade or so ago, such innocent (and founding) presumptions might have been true-enough. But, "the visible presence of the Experimenter has now permanently changed the Experiment." And, the Experimenters now find that they have no answer.

The sad thing is, in the beginning, it wasn't that way at all: When Ebay had mutual feedback; and was just a venue to bring buyers and sellers together; and one could determine the level of risk they were willing to take vs. the price they paid, it was GREAT. Much like the Linux world, Ebay used to be a "community". Sellers could set their own terms [I once bought a book from a seller who only shipped once a week- as many non-pro sellers used to. Ebay was not their life- it was just a way of making some extra money and getting rid of unwanted junk. I was willing to wait, because I knew that a year later, I'd still have not read the book. Today....Ebay dictates handling time, and a seller who ships once a week would be booted] and with mutual feedback, you knew what to expect from a seller, and you also knew who the problem buyers were. Ebay only intervened in the worst cases of blatant fraud.

Today, Ebay sees itself as the next Amazon. Even though they have no merchandise of their own to sell, they want to imitate Amazon. Trouble is, they do their Amazon impersonation half-assed. So they removed a seller's ability to leave negative feedback for a buyer; but they did not implement a means of collecting payment from the buyer before the buyer removes your item from the market; and they do not keep track of sellers claims/returns [Amazon, by comparison, will cut a buyer off if he has a high rate of retuns.]

When a corporation tries to implement a heavy-handed authoritarian system, but does not do it well; and/or does not administer it in a fair manner......the result is that a system of exploitation of developes- and more good people than bad are alienated. The rteal criminals [on either side] don't care- they figure out how to game the system- and where unfairness exists, there is always ample opportunity for that. So the crooks stay on, but the good people are discouraged and leave.

Ebay was once a free market. Now it is like America: A bastardized mess of the remnants of a free market operating under the behest of a government/corporate monopoly.