It seems like eBay wants it both ways. They want to have a huge user base with low friction to get started, but they also don't want fraudulent players. Instead of doing KYC (know your customer) like many financial services, they're stuck doing dirty tricks like this to try and combat fraud.

Cheating is rampant in all financial services that mediate transactions between end customers. No shortage of stories about card fraud or PayPal woes.

That is largely down to the liablity being on the end points of the transaction not on the transport layer...

Either the consumer or the merchant bears the cost for fraud, rarely does paypal or the banks if they did the problem of identity fraud would be solved, and would not be called "identity theft"

Banks also port scan. There was a list in the previous discussion.

Why is it bad to have it both ways?

Because it's at the expense of the customer.

Fraud is at the expense of the seller and raises prices for the customer. I don’t see how this is at the expense of the customer, I just visit eBay and buy something if I want to.

They actually do KYC (but criminals can also fake it)

That might be the case but it's next to imposible prove it. You can always use remote software/VPN that allows changing ports(VNC over ssh). I do see your point about auctions though.

I don't understand this could you explain?

Ratings are an important part of the eBay ecosystem.

He's saying people let others use their eBay accounts through RDC to game the system.

Also it's an auction site. People want to raise the price by bidding on their own items

Exactly.

So let's we have fraudseller_1 that sell something like iPhone. Here comes honestbuyer_1 that bid for this item with $50. Seller sees offer, but want to rise it.

Since seller can't use his own IP he is using some remote desktop to login somewhere else as fraudbuyer_1 (different account!) and bid $100. Then he wait honestbuyer_1 to bid again. If this happens then two - fraudbuyer_1 and honestbuyer_1 can "race" (note the quotes!) for this item.

Of course this is simplified scenario because can be involved pack of fraud buyers to fool buyers.

I know some person IRL that was involved 10 years ago in such activities. So his friend sells vacation homes and buyers from UK bidding for them. But if seller doesn't like bids he call to that person to make bid from his own account. And of course to rise price with least $1000.

But... this can't be track using eBay since it's via phone call and no remote sessions. Today sellers using virtual desktops (RDP, VNC, TeamViewer or other) to do this.

eBay has a policy that allows buys to not pay with limited consequences. If eBay simplicity forced the bidding account to have enough cash to cover the transaction this would no longer be viable as some percentage of the time the shell bidder would have to pay out the fees.

Seller A is selling an item he bought for $5 dollars. He's trying to sell it for $10, for a 100% profit. The current bid is $7 dollars. He logs in to a remote desktop and bids on his own item to bump the price with a different MAC and IP. It sells for $12 and he's happy.

Seller B is having a hard time making sales. She thinks he needs better ratings. So she logs into the site using a remote client and 'buys' 10 of her items on different accounts and leaves 10 glowing reviews.

Ebay is scanning ports to detect the tools used to do this.

> Seller A is selling an item he bought for $5 dollars. He's trying to sell it for $10, for a 100% profit. The current bid is $7 dollars. He logs in to a remote desktop and bids on his own item to bump the price with a different MAC and IP. It sells for $12 and he's happy.

So why don't you set the starting price at $10? Does ebay not let you set the base price?

An auction for an item with a history of an apparent bidding war up to $10 appears much more desirable than an auction for an item that just sits there for a week at its opening bid of $10.

This is why I never bid till 10sec out using a automated app. It’s stupid to actually bid on items and allow the other bidders to respond.

At a lower starting price, you get people bidding. And then you fraudulently raise it. The legit bidders think they have a now have a "vested interest" in it and will bid up "just a little more".

It's the same thing with the penny auction sites like DealDash which is part of their terribleness.

They should find a better way instead of compromising privacy of all the users.

And even if they decided don't they have any responsibility to tell the users.

I don't think they shouldn't, most people don't think this is an issue. I certainly don't.

They’re bypassing your local network firewall, and local machine firewall, then attempting to connect to blocked ports. People have been jailed for less.

I definitely don't agree with jail. Unless there is real damage, then I wouldn't consider it an issue.

Sucks for that corporation. They have teams and teams of lawyers - they should have consulted one of them.

It is not just for a corporation to suddenly decide the law is unfair when they are subjected to it when real people have been harmed by the same law.

>Many companies or persons share their desktops for remote usage. Later they sell this service to eBay users.

Is this really a thing? I thought everybody just used residential proxy/VPN services like luminati. It makes sense too, because a proxy service is way easier to adapt to your application than a remote desktop service.

Luminati can be detected too specially when you're company with DEEP pockets.

Part of me thought it was done to combat bots. I still find it distateful. Part of me understands it and I can take an educated guess how it was justified.