Or the classic: a corporation or LLC.

You have to provide government issued ID if you are a high volume seller that is a business and not an individual. There are also different rules about address disclosure for corporations. Per the blog post

This from the article

> However, sellers that are not individuals (businesses) must provide a valid personal government ID on behalf of the seller (business) or provide a valid government-issued record or tax document that includes the business name and physical address.

This is easy to do.

https://ipostal1.com/virtual-business-address-plans-pricing....

I use 1Postal as my “virtual mailbox” now that my wife and I fly across the US six months out of the year and our “home” the other six months is a unit in a “Condotel” in Florida that we own that doesn’t accept mail.

It specifically shows up as a physical address for post office coding and lookup purposes and not a PO Box.

Setting up an LLC is also easy to do and relatively cheap using sites like nolo.com.

Most regulations just screw up average people while being completely toothless against the actual criminals.

Yes, it’s easy for a criminal to do that. However, then they escalate from simple marketplace fraud (which is very hard to prosecute) to committing wire-fraud which is not just a federal felony but also carries stringent punishment and is much easier to prosecute.

For evidence, see the trial of Elizabeth Holmes and SBF.

That’s not criminal at all.

During different parts of my life, I’ve done real estate on the side, group fitness as an independent contractor and software development as an independent contractor (C2C) each time I went to nolo.com and registered an LLC that was recognized both by the state and federal government.

As I said in another post, I’ve set up a virtual mailbox for other reasons where all of my mail goes to. But they also sell business use cases. None of this is illegal. I had an EIN and reported taxes through it.

The GP's point is that if you do these things in conjunction with a scam, you're now ticking off more crime boxes that could increase the severity of a punishment. There are a lot of perfectly legal things that when done to commit a crime lead to someone breaking additional laws.

(See also: never mess with the postal service police.)

I don't know if this comment is a genuine question or one of those questions noting that any system could be defeated. I think it's genuine, but it still makes it hard to respond to. Anything I can say, you can rebut because it's not a 100% deterrent. We don't have rules because they work 100% of the time, but we also don't want to live in The Purge where there are no rules. Often the rules we've put in place make it more difficult to break the law and deter the vast majority from doing so.

It doesn't stop someone from doing that and there will always be ways around things, but it's not that easy. Virtual addresses should require a notarized Form 1583. Maybe some don't do what is legally required, but things have become harder. Yes, you can get virtual phone numbers and burner phones, but there's a reason why a lot of sites want SMS verification: most people won't go through the cost and effort of getting a burner (and sites can differentiate between VoIP/Google Voice and real phones). Yes, you can get an LLC and EIN, but that again costs money and spreads knowledge about your identity a bit more. Yes, maybe you can fake some stuff, but then how are you getting the money? Are you getting a check for "DefinitelyNotAScam, LLC", but you're not a member of that LLC so you can't cash the check? Yes, maybe some places will still cash the check, but we're now talking about lots of payments that are eating into your margins: LLC fees, registered agent fees, burner phone numbers, virtual addresses, shady check-cashing places taking a cut, etc. And if you need to get a new LLC/phone/address for each scam, you're really increasing the cost and effort. It also increases the surface area for mistakes. If you're looking to insulate yourself, the more places you need to register and do stuff, the more chances for mistakes, especially as people are starting out. More surface area makes it harder to hide - certainly not impossible, but harder.

Know Your Customer rules in banking haven't eliminated money laundering and other nefarious activities, but I'd guess that they've made them a lot harder.

Yea, it doesn't stop everything, but it does really change the money and effort required. Maybe you don't think it's that much money or effort, but it might be enough to deter a lot of stuff. How does the lock on my house deter theft? I've seen the LockPickingLawyer make short work of basically every lock. Why even bother with a lock when the lock can be so easily picked? Yes, I know that the locks on my home won't stop determined, skilled thieves. However, they do work well enough for their intended purpose. Will these measures work well enough for their intended purpose? I don't know, but it does seem reasonable to think that they could raise the cost and effort enough that it'll deter a lot of bad actors and leave platforms with more resources to handle what's remaining.

It's just hard to respond because you can easily say, "well, I know a place that will give out virtual addresses without a Form 1583 and I know how I could..." Yep, there are ways around things. I think this is more a debate about how much bad activity it will deter. That's kinda the situation with almost everything in life. How much will masks prevent COVID spread? How much will a lock keep my stuff from being stolen? How much will a semi-anonymous username-based system like HN prevent really bad stuff that some anonymous forms see? How much does email or SMS verification deter bad acting on platforms?

It's just hard to figure out what you're looking for in a response. Yes, it won't stop someone truly determined to get around it, but maybe it should give you the same amount of comfort that the lock on your house does - and most people don't leave their place unlocked.

You’re saying a lot. But nothing I am suggesting is either illegal or counter to the law.

I set up an LLC through nolo.com that takes care of all of the paperwork that makes it a legal entity registered in my state.

I file the necessary paperwork with IRS and get a legal EIN.

I legally register my business to have an address that is legally allowed to offer a virtual mailbox and gets mail from the USPS.

I give eBay the legally required information for my business.

This all completely above board and shields me personally from lawsuits. I set up business bank accounts and credit cards and don’t commingle funds.

So do you think the bill is worthless because there are legal workarounds and therefore we should give up trying to regulate online marketplaces? Or are you suggesting that the bill doesn't go far enough and that your suggestions should also be illegal?

He's addressing the first one, but I could read your comments as either way in which case there's two different discussions going on.

There is nothing the bill is going that lets the customer know who they are buying from. If I want to hide my identity, I can obscure using legal means.

This is just as useless as the GDPR that just added cookie pop ups across the web.

Currently eBay requires verification of a govt issued ID and SS#, not just EIN.

Everything I am reading is saying that eBay will allow an EIN.

I have four eBay seller accounts. They require SS# and ID as part of managed payments, in addition to the EIN. There system didn't want to take the information on one of my accounts, even though it was valid, and they suspended payouts for a month. Got it sorted out eventually.