Latest eBay Scam - from China

19:28.21 - Sunday 27th November 2005   (Link to This Entry)

Browsing for Christmas presents over on eBay I noticed another scam in progress. It seems there are groups of usernames that buy each others low-priced items in order to build positive feedback for everyone in the group. Since multiple positives from the same user only result in +1 anyway, there needs to be X number of usernames in the group in order to achieve a rating of X-1.

One such group includes the users kwq41, nrt6y5ew, ybnm85, nrty7rwe, mjuv92, fkcmz, dkvmx8, vfttyryv, uyvr35, cndx24, ybgzp0, xcqeoiqd, hvn38, gjxzn15, lozp69, efefefyu, dszb48, pzxdhowb, gwerc51 and many, many more if the feedback for 139391391 is anything to go by.

Each member in the group has one feedback from each other member in the group, so it's fairly easy to see how many names there are in the group, and by extension it's easy enough to find all of the usernames in the group, since they are listed in each other's feedback - do a little feedback hopping and you eventually go through most of the usernames.

The major giveaway - which you will have noticed if you clicked on one or two of the links above - is that the pool of feedback comments appears to be even smaller than the pool of members, with the same comments appearing multiple times for the same user as well as across different users within the group. Another giveaway (as if you need one) is the items for which the group members have bid. They sell for stupidly low prices (£0.72) within hours of being listed and the titles consist of rows of question marks, occasionally divided by random numbers. Like this. And this.

The items that they purport to sell to legit members are the typical high-value items du jour - we found them while looking for a cheap SatNav system for example, but you can expect to see them flogging In-Car DVD players as well. PayPal is never accepted since it leaves a money trail and offers some protection for the buyer, Bank/Western Union Transfers are favoured instead and the items are always located in Beijing, China.