Spokesman Hani Durzy said the company is targeting all scammers - from petty thieves to organized crime syndicates.
Online auction site eBay heightens security precautions as fraud mounts...
RACHEL KONRAD
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Executives at eBay Inc. are touting security as their top priority in 2007 after an internal survey showed that online scammers may be denting the company's reputation.
The San Jose, Calif.-based online auction company began a program last year to safeguard members' identities by concealing their user names on expensive listings. That measure could make it harder for con artists to contact losing bidders and goad them into "second-chance offers," where customers wire cash to the scammers' accounts.
Engineers also want to reduce counterfeit items and clamp down on scams between buyers and sellers from different countries, said William Cobb, president of eBay North America.
"It's no secret that online criminals who target sites like eBay and PayPal have grown in number and sophistication over time," Cobb said in comments posted Wednesday to an eBay forum.
"Where we've historically put an emphasis on transparency and free choice, today the security threats are more complex, and we're more actively protecting our buyers from fraud."
Representatives are also sending nasty e-mails to sellers who charge egregious shipping and handling fees. eBay reduced the average shipping cost in the "cellphones" category by 25 per cent since last summer, Cobb said.
The emphasis on security enhancements - billed as the most important initiative in the company's 12-year history - comes as senior eBay executives host the site's top 250 sellers at closed-door meetings this week in Burlingame. Entrepreneurs attending the second annual E- Commerce Forum sold seven million items worth $1.5 billion in 2006.
So-called "power sellers" have expressed concern - and have threatened to go to other sites - over concerns that eBay has been slow to combat fraud.
eBay says less than 100th of one per cent of the listings on its website are fraudulent. But even by that conservative measure, 58,300 auctions may have been fraudulent in one three-month period. More than 583 million items were listed in the third quarter of 2006.
More concerning, fraud disproportionately strikes high-end categories such as automobiles, electronics and jewelry. There's no reliable way to estimate how much is lost to con artists on eBay, where $12.64 billion in merchandise exchanged hands in the third quarter.
Spokesman Hani Durzy said the company is targeting all scammers - from petty thieves to organized crime syndicates.
"We're never going to completely stop the bad guys from using the Internet, but we do know that negative experiences are a major reason people leave eBay - and they pass along word of mouth to other people," Durzy said. "In 2007, you'll see a sea change in our approach to trust and safety.
“There is a destiny that makes us all brothers: None goes his way alone.
What we put into the lives of others,
comes back into our own.”--Edwin Markham
xppman wrote: Too little WAY to late in the game IMO.
Guess eBay's starting to feel the "crunch" of their reputation as scam central.
They are sooooo much becoming the poster "boy" for bad behavior, it's unreal!!
__________________
“There is a destiny that makes us all brothers: None goes his way alone.
What we put into the lives of others,
comes back into our own.”--Edwin Markham
If Organized Crime ISN'T taking advantage of the wonderful opportunity that e-bay offers, they are missing out. Crooks hold e-bay in high esteem. And if e-bay is making an effort to protect high priced sales only, does that mean they could care less about the rest of the sellers?? Meg, YOU SUCK!
“There is a destiny that makes us all brothers: None goes his way alone.
What we put into the lives of others,
comes back into our own.”--Edwin Markham
siriusblackop wrote: RE: And if e-bay is making an effort to protect high priced sales only, does that mean they could care less about the rest of the sellers??
Yes, we come in last after chopped liver as usual!!
Anyone got room for a pink slap and would be willing to post this on ebay?
LOL I don't have room for another one right now!!
They (LiveWorld?) have been suspending posters for exercising their right to "Free Speech", and not allowing "voices" to post to the eBaY educational forums: Forums that were in fact set up as part of an FTC settlement arrangement/agreement between eBaY.com and the FTC when President Clinton was in office, actually. At one time, one could google the details of the settlement notes. It has been archived also, a bunch of times, as well.
In other news...here is something else interesting...old but noteworthy just the same:
...Making matters worse are hacker Web sites such as CarderPlanet.com and ShadowCrew.com that sell phishing starter kits. "There's a whole underground economy of trading credit card information back and forth and the tools for doing credit card fraud," Maier says. The Anti-Phishing Working Group has been working with the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI, but Maier says it has been difficult to prosecute these crimes because many of the attacks originate from foreign countries.
By Michael Cohn, Security Pipeline Bank Systems & Technology July 20, 2004
"There's a lot of activity in the former Soviet bloc, the Eastern bloc, Latvia and Ukraine," says John Curran, supervisory special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center. "It definitely looks like there are organized groups."
Phishing involves sending fraudulent e-mails that appears to be from a legitimate organization -- such as a bank, credit card company, online merchant or Internet service provider -- asking the recipient to divulge personal and financial information like birth dates, Social Security numbers and PIN codes. Unlucky victims are then subject to identity theft, monetary losses and credit card fraud.
While Curran notes that a broad array of criminals appears to be involved in phishing attacks, ranging from teenagers to grandmothers, the FBI is investigating links to organized crime. So far, Curran hasn't seen any indication that crime syndicates with ties to the Mafia are involved.
The U.S. Secret Service has also noted an increase in organized crime involvement in phishing. At AIT Global's Annual InfoSec Meeting at the United Nations in June, Robert Caltabiano, assistant to the special agent in charge in the New York Field Office of the U.S. Secret Service, pointed to the increasing presence of organized crime in phishing attacks. Although Caltabiano recommended that victims first go to local law enforcement for help, he noted, "With phishing attacks, the information goes global."
The Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry forum, reported 1,197 unique attacks in May 2004, up from 402 attacks in March. The group defines attacks as one unique e-mail blast. Dan Maier, a spokesperson for the Anti-Phishing Working Group and director of product marketing at Tumbleweed Communications, believes that organized crime participation in phishing has been increasing.
"Early on, it was amateurs," Maier acknowledges. "There is still some level of amateurs doing this, but more and more this looks like the work of professionals. There are a number of attacks against Australian banks that point back to Asian gangs. And we can tell by looking at the nature of some of the attacks, the ones that use common elements and come back to common Web sites, that multiple attacks are linked."
Making matters worse are hacker Web sites such as CarderPlanet.com and ShadowCrew.com that sell phishing starter kits. "There's a whole underground economy of trading credit card information back and forth and the tools for doing credit card fraud," Maier says. The Anti-Phishing Working Group has been working with the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI, but Maier says it has been difficult to prosecute these crimes because many of the attacks originate from foreign countries.
Nevertheless, there have been several successful prosecutions. The Moscow Times reported in May that the U.K.'s National High-Tech Crimes Unit arrested 12 Russian-speaking people who had been recruited by the Russian mafia to participate in a phishing scam. The suspects, who came from Russia, the Baltic republics and Ukraine, set up bank accounts in which money stolen from phishing victims was deposited. The money was later transferred back to syndicate members in Russia or used to buy goods. The suspects had been recruited in Internet chat rooms and through local Russian-language publications in Great Britain.
The New York Times recently reported that authorities in Romania had arrested 100 hackers involved with phishing attacks. The Romanian General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime, working with the Secret Service, arrested one hacker, Dan Marius Stefan, in September 2003. Stefan was convicted of stealing nearly $500,000 through phishing e-mails that claimed to be from eBay. He is now serving 30 months in jail.
Closer to home, the Federal Trade Commission has worked with the Department of Justice and the FBI on filing complaints and prosecuting several individuals, including Zachary Keith Hill, of Houston, Texas, who pleaded guilty in May and was sentenced to a 46-month prison sentence. Hill had been sending e-mails claiming to be from the AOL Billing Center.
"Within the last year, we brought three law enforcement actions against phishers," says Patricia Poss, an attorney with the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. One of these, announced in July 2003, involved a minor in California who was charged with violations of the FTC Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The young phisher was sending out e-mails pretending to be from AOL. "We alleged he was soliciting personal information from consumers. We went to the defendant instead of AOL and reached a settlement," Poss says.
AOL isn't the only Internet service provider that has been a target. EarthLink has also noticed an increase in phishing activity and has been stepping up its enforcement efforts. EarthLink is offering a free downloadable toolbar called the Scam Blocker that prevents customers from accessing Web sites identified as phishing sites. EarthLink partnered with Brightmail and eBay on the initiative.
"We're reducing the number of phishers that a customer would have access to," says David Remick, manager of information security at EarthLink. EarthLink has also been partnering with law enforcement. "We've been working with the FBI and Secret Service and local law enforcement agencies," he added. "We traced back the source, and the majority of phishers are now being hosted overseas. This year, the No. 1 destination is South Korea."
Last year, EarthLink found that the majority of phishing sites was hosted domestically among smaller ISPs, so it built relationships with many of them to prevent phishers, only to see the traffic go overseas. "Based on our contacts within the FBI, they attribute it to organized crime in Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific countries," says Remick. "We don't know any success they've had prosecuting these criminals, but based on the increasing sophistication of the Web sites, and based on the language in the e-mails, we've been able to trace patterns and activities. We've got a more professional type of criminal that's leveraging these more sophisticated technologies."
This article originally appeared on July 07, 2004 in SecurityPipeline, part of CMP Media's TechWeb.
-- Edited by Cyber Diva at 15:25, 2007-03-21
__________________
“There is a destiny that makes us all brothers: None goes his way alone.
What we put into the lives of others,
comes back into our own.”--Edwin Markham
You wouldn't expect Rob Chesnut '84, the deputy general counsel to the largest online marketplace in the world, to be spending his day worrying about lawn darts.
But in fact, lawn darts are just one of the millions of items the former federal prosecutor must concern himself with as he polices eBay and attempts to keep the Web site a viable place to do business.
"We do all we can," said Chesnut. "We want to have a good reputation and don't want buyers or sellers to get hurt in the process."
Along with handling compliance issues, Chesnut also creates programs to educate users, oversees litigation in domestic affairs, coordinates investigations with state, federal, and foreign agencies, and handles all legal aspects of employee relations and real estate transactions. EBay has more than 2 million users a day vying for as many as 6 million items. According to the Federal Trade Commission, there were nearly 11,000 online-auction fraud complaints in 2000, up from about 100 in 1997.
"We can't possibly screen all the items or know all the items--the numbers are unfathomable," he said. "It would be impossible, but also we don't have the right."
According to the U.S. Communications Decency Act of 1996, a provider of an interactive computer service cannot be held liable as the publisher of information furnished by another content provider. "The Communications Act doesn't want eBay and others to edit sites," he said. "We need to make [eBay] available to everyone."
While users can list just about anything they want for sale, eBay does strive to eliminate abusers of the system and repeat offenders, Chesnut said. He also tries to educate users of eBay about current laws so they can better protect themselves. "EBay is much like a big garage sale," he said.
High-profile auction items such as babies, kidneys, and a "barely used brain" are not Chesnut's biggest worry, he said. "They appear to be hoaxes, and no one is actually intent on going through with a transaction," he said.
However, items that people will pay for that may be fraudulent, unsafe, or illegal are his main concern. For example, lawn darts, banned by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in 1988, have surfaced for sale on eBay. When one of eBay's users e-mailed Chesnut to alert him to the sale of lawn darts on the site, the deputy general counsel joined forces with the CPSC to create a link on eBay that lists all products the commission has banned over the years. The number of hits on the CPSC site has tripled since the link was created, Chesnut said.
Chesnut came to work at eBay because of his own interest in the site. Late one night he was searching for Polaroid fold-up cameras online, and sent his resume to eBay's online job search. The company called him the next day.
"It was a total whim," he said. "I had been sending resumes to private companies, but this was a perfect fit because of my government experience."
Chesnut's wife, Angela Malacari, also works at eBay, heading a team of investigators that works with law enforcement agencies to track down fraudulent sellers. Chesnut previously worked as a federal prosecutor for 11 years, handling everything from bank robberies to kidnappings and espionage cases, including the prosecution of Aldrich Ames, the CIA official who spied for Russia. Despite his experience, he said, "Nothing could prepare you for eBay."
--Robin Robinson
__________________
“There is a destiny that makes us all brothers: None goes his way alone.
What we put into the lives of others,
comes back into our own.”--Edwin Markham
Just over a..... ago, the chat boards were contracted out to independent company LiveWorld Inc, and a "Report" button added to every post. Gone are the days when auctions of out-of the ordinary items could be safely posted on the board and their merits or otherwise discussed by board members, as this now appears to be regarded as a violation of the eBay board usage policy clause "Posting auction reports or member violations".
Posts on the most egregious fraud of all, that of the Saratoga Ring's stamp alteration operation (documented here) are deleted as well as those discussing other auctions, but apparently only when sellers' names or individual auction item numbers are explicitly mentioned, and then noticed by "snitchers".
Exposure of the Saratoga Ring and its operation on eBay's chat and discussion boards caused an upheaval in the eBay stamps community in mid-2002, when eBay chose to ignore the many complaints on the grounds that it was only a venue.
Reporting suspect items to eBay and the SCW
March 9 , 2006:
If you see a questionable item on eBay and you want it investigated by the Stamps Community Watch group (SCW), follow these simple steps to maximize the chances of your report getting through to them:
1. Report via an appropriate link
Don't report items in the normal way through the Security Center, as those reports have less chance of reaching the individuals assigned to process SCW reports.
Instead, use the Report link at the bottom of the Selling of Stamps page.
The following link will also work: http://www.ebay.com/scw.
2. Report "AS IS" listings not related to condition to the SCW
Offering stamps "AS IS" is permitted only in regard to condition, but it requires all defects to be completely described. Any other "AS IS" listing is a violation and should be reported.
3. Report image stealing sellers to the SCW
Borrowing scans from other listings to offer non-existent stamps continues to be a major problem on eBay. It is safe to assume that if it looks too good to be true, it isn't true.
Image stealing sellers may have low feedback and you may also see evidence of shill bidding using low-feedback ID's. The stolen image is often found in a recently closed listing or sometimes even a current listing.
When reporting such fraud, avoid calling it a stolen image because the eBay representative may assume that the problem is a VERO (copyright) problem that can be reported only by the original seller, rather than outright fraud reportable by anyone. The first word in any complaint should be "Fraud". Again, reporting using the special stamps reporting links detailed above will have a much better chance of success.
eBay SCW workshop answers questions despite lack of attendance...............
“There is a destiny that makes us all brothers: None goes his way alone.
What we put into the lives of others,
comes back into our own.”--Edwin Markham
xppman wrote: diva.. Your NOT supposed to give them all the "evidence" all the time.
Let them wonder sometimes
Haha! Good one!
I've got some "secrets" left though- trust me, babe!
__________________
“There is a destiny that makes us all brothers: None goes his way alone.
What we put into the lives of others,
comes back into our own.”--Edwin Markham
I read a quote from a Law Enforcement person; (in/from Chicago?)
He said crime on ebaY was "as organized as it gets".
I will find that and post it.
Also sounds like good video fodder.
Brilliant observation: crime on eBaY is "as organized as it gets!"
No place quite like it, that's for sure.
__________________
“There is a destiny that makes us all brothers: None goes his way alone.
What we put into the lives of others,
comes back into our own.”--Edwin Markham
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