Why am I still getting bogus 2nd chance offers on eBay?

[tth2]

Didn`t eBay institute its new "anonymous" bidding system, in theory, to prevent losing bidders from being inundated with bogus 2nd chance offers, if they started bidding above the $200 or so level?

 

So on two relatively big-ticket auctions by Mark Wilson where I didn`t win, why have I been deluged with bogus 2nd chance offers? I don`t think I bid below $200, so I don`t think my identity was ever shown. How are these guys figuring out who I am?

[VintageComics]

Didn`t eBay institute its new "anonymous" bidding system, in theory, to prevent losing bidders from being inundated with bogus 2nd chance offers, if they started bidding above the $200 or so level?

 

So on two relatively big-ticket auctions by Mark Wilson where I didn`t win, why have I been deluged with bogus 2nd chance offers? I don`t think I bid below $200, so I don`t think my identity was ever shown. How are these guys figuring out who I am?

 

I thought I could get a few extra $$ out of you.

 

[tth2]

Didn`t eBay institute its new "anonymous" bidding system, in theory, to prevent losing bidders from being inundated with bogus 2nd chance offers, if they started bidding above the $200 or so level?

 

So on two relatively big-ticket auctions by Mark Wilson where I didn`t win, why have I been deluged with bogus 2nd chance offers? I don`t think I bid below $200, so I don`t think my identity was ever shown. How are these guys figuring out who I am?

 

I thought I could get a few extra $$ out of you.

 

[G.A.tor]

admittedly, I too got hit with a second chance offer (3x) on a book that I recently bid that I was definitely way above the $200 mark when I initially bid...so, as Tim inquired, how did they know? (something is wrong here)...

there were also a couple of days, where AOL spam filter caught like 30 offers from some China website where the title was "question from ebay member..."

me thinks there is still an issue with ebay

rick

[tth2]

If any tech-savvy or scam-savvy board member can explain how these scammers are able to figure out the names of the underbidders, it sure would be appreciated.

[Scheradon]

Tim,

 

Were the book(s) you bid on from a US seller? Some other Countries don't have the hidden ID in their bid history. If that's not the case here, then...

 

It is possible, through some effort, to match up a feedback score with a likely candidate. Meaning, if someone had had their eye on you and what type of stuff you might bid on, they could notice the feedback score match and "take a guess".

 

Still seems like a lot of effort and detective work though. Did you recieve these through eBay's message system or an outside eBay email?

 

Although I get daily eBay and Paypal phishing emails (often several a day), I haven't recieved any of these yet.

[tth2]

Tim,

 

Were the book(s) you bid on from a US seller? Some other Countries don't have the hidden ID in their bid history. If that's not the case here, then...

US seller.

 

It is possible, through some effort, to match up a feedback score with a likely candidate. Meaning, if someone had had their eye on you and what type of stuff you might bid on, they could notice the feedback score match and "take a guess".

 

Still seems like a lot of effort and detective work though. Did you recieve these through eBay's message system or an outside eBay email?

They came in as outside emails, so not only is it not coming through eBay but they know my email address. I also thought it seemed like too much work for these scam artists to figure stuff out through the few clues that eBay offers them. I mean they must work on volume because there can`t be that many suckers who fall for their tricks. That`s why I`m curious if they`ve figured out some way to crack the code or something to figure out more easily who the underbidders are.

[whetteon]

Not terribly surprising that some spammers have cracked the eBay bidding code. After all, it's this posters opinion that the ONLY reason the $200+ hidden identity rule was put into place was to allow some of the high sellers to bump bids on their own auctions.

 

Could the spammer have gotten your email address via another legit deal? Maybe you bought some cheap books and the spammer just kept the information about you in a database and took a guess on your buying patterns.

[tth2]

I haven`t bought a book off ebay since early 2006. It just seems to me that remembering my name and email and guessing my bidding patterns is way too much work for some scammer from Russia or China.

[ComicSupply]

Here's a question.

 

Let's say the auction ends on the USA Site.

 

The user is in China, and checks ebay.china or whatever it is and searches for it. Will the results show up from a different ebay site?