Ebay Padded Listings Fraud Scam Scandal Continue?

budnonymous · Top Poster

Ebay Padded Listings Fraud Scam Scandal Continue?

budnonymous · Top Poster

June 14, 2008 |

eBay and Buy accused of artificially inflating auction listing numbers

By Dave Parrack

eBay has had a pretty tumultuous year so far, with a sellers revolt, legal blows, an increased level of competition, and a general downturn in business. However, you wouldnt know any of this from the listing numbers over the past few months which are up year on year. Which begs the question: Is eBay artificially inflating the figures?

Back in February, eBay faced its first sellers revolt over the changes to listing fees and the feedback system. The result was that millions of once loyal customers stopped trading on the site for a week, and many never found their way back, instead switching to other services which though similar, were offering a fairer trading floor to conduct business on..

In March, eBay published its annual shareholder filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the company admitted growth was slowing down, and there could be tough times ahead.

However, according to an article on Read Write Web, the number of auctions listings at eBay hasnt actually dropped at all. Independent tracking firm MedVed.net shows that year on year, the numbers are actually up.

There could be an explanation for this staring us in the face, but its not one that eBay would be quick to admit as it shows a certain amount of underhandedness on its part.

eBay recently signed a partnership with Buy.com which meant that from May onwards, listings for the online retailer appeared on eBay. These arent small numbers were talking about either, with around 500,000 items thought to be listed on the site at any one time by Buy.

Unfortunately, as some eagle-eyed eBay users over on the companys forums have noted, not all of these listings actually contain any items. A fair portion of the listings appear in searches labelled as New, and though indicating potential buyers would be bidding on a new item, there is actually no indication of what that item is, if indeed it exists at all.

This means that the listing numbers are potentially being manipulated, whether intentionally or otherwise, which would result in any financial reports on the state of the business being incorrect. This could dramatically affect shareholders intentions for the site, and whether they want to hold stock in the company or not.

284dan · Senior Member

Here is another possible scam eBay is pulling to inflate "hits" to the site. I may be mistaken, but something is odd, at least on my computer.

In firefox, if you watch the tab on an page opened to eBay and run your mouse over the Buy, Sell, My eBay etc... links across the top, you will see the tab flash (quickly) the word "Loading" then the page title appears again. The Stop button flashes too.

Similar results in IE at the bottom of the browser where "Done" appears.

Is this eBay using java to create fake page loads to increase traffic stats? Or, is my computer acting weird?

budnonymous · Top Poster

Sounds like you are visiting the site with javascript enabled. When you even move your runner over the menu area at top right it starts to load something. Very irritating IMO. Along the lines of 'mystery meat navigation'. I think I have suddenly wound up somewhere else without actually clicking anything.
I have nav sounds and I always hear the 'page loading sound' when I even run over those.
Guess maybe that could help boost the page counts. If people don't have all that garbage blocked out.
I would not be surprised to learn that sleazebay cheats on anything & everything they can. Everything. look at all they have been caught for already.

BTW, in case you were not aware, the ebay site has the xss flaw, (and some cookie handling flaw when you go back to non secured pages from https page) and they are finding out the hackers have new exploits all the time.
The last one that came to light allowed the haxors to get right into your 'My_ebay' page. I have a hunch that is only one thing.
If you are even casually surfing ebay, signed in & have javascrpt enabled you really are at risk. ebay/pp has a lot of open doors.

You should have NoScript and AdBlock Plus (and have them set up properly) as the very basics of safe browsing, not just commiebay either. Everywhere.

They are starting that crap with some unique flash cookie or something.
(the very same thing that is not safe) THought I recall seeing they were planning on the cookie or whatever to be 'permenantly installed' on your machine too BTW

-- Edited by budnonymous at 00:08, 2008-06-17