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Penny Deals, Bots Power EBay Scammers
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-08-01
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Automation allows a criminal to quickly establish a new eBay profile, purchase a bunch of one-cent items, and have those profiles populated with lots of positive feedback.
 | | Penny Deals, Bots Power eBay Scammers |  |
Say hello to the feedback scam. The InformationWeek report on security firm Fortinet's discovery of the bot-powered scam does the one thing that can truly damage user trust in eBay: artificially inflating positive feedback scores.
Feedback is how eBay users police themselves. It takes time to earn a modest amount of positive feedback, which will only be given to those who live up to their auctions. A profile with minimal feedback advertising a pricey item for sale will likely be avoided by regular eBay users, unless they avail themselves of an escrow payment service.
Now positive feedback is available for a price, just a penny per entry. With sellers of one-cent items using bots to manage those sales, the scammer can quickly set up a bunch of new accounts, use bots to make those one-cent purchases, and reap the automated positive feedback generated by the sellers' bots.
Not many bidders on a choice electronic item will look much more deeply than the feedback received. Buyers can view the auctions that the seller participated in from the feedback window, and see if a bunch of one-cent items were purchased, but only if those auctions are less that 30 days old.
Guillaume Lovet, a researcher with Fortinet, did note in his research some typical similarities with these pumped-up profiles:
(T)he same striking pattern is repeated over pages and pages: most user names are made of six to eight random letters and bear around 15 evaluations. Having a look at these profiles reveal that they've bought roughly the same items - all for 1 cent.
Those bots tend to purchase the same items, and receive the same standard feedback from each seller bot. Lovet likewise commented on this:
In a nutshell: Two bots are talking. And doing business.
This is a good example of a "cyber" symbiotic phenomenon (aka a win-win situation): sellers are making cash without doing anything, and scammers owning the fake accounts are building positive feedback, again, while sleeping, watching porn, or chatting on IRC - and only for a fistful of bucks.
Indeed, With that 1 cent rate, building 100 accounts with 15 positive feedbacks each cost $15. And 100 accounts are a reasonably solid base to set up a good deal of bogus auctions.
Caveat emptor.
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Tag: eBay
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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