Continued identity abuse by fraudsters using ebay and other on-line commerce sites
Hello, I'm writing to seek the advice of the committee and the forum at large. I have been a regular but infrequent user of ebay as a site for online trade. As a whole the experience has been positive and I can say that friends and family have had similar positive experiences. The net was gaining a reputation as an honest and efficient way of trading. This works well when the trust rating systems are intact and fraudsters are dealt with quickly. This is not the case. I trawl one small area of interest and have done so far the last few months. In that time I have seen repeated listings, posted using the identity theft of a legitimate and credible account. I report them to e-bay yet week by week the same people post the same offers. I have written to both e-bay and googlemail listing the repeated detail and contact address used by the scammers. My question is how is it possible that the same email addresses, IP address, can continue to be used? Surely if I advise, in writing, the supplier of that email service (gmail) that the address is being used continually in criminal acts they should cancel that address. Immediately, as is there right. It states quite explicitly in their terms of use that an email address can be cancelled if used in such a way. Similarly given the sophistication of filtering I fail to see how ebay can continue to allow listings that have the same item description, same photo, same body of text encouraging external contact, same item location, same auction period, same opening bid price, and all submitted over a ten minute period using the wrong category listing and by a person with the same email (one of two options). 20 or so per week for a month using the one search string "apple g5." I find that worrying and I know that this behavior by the predators and the seeming somnolent state of the service provider is killing a vibrant and socially useful industry. Andrew Chambers votedave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Theatrical production manager \ authorised local representative for: d5 4 J humans digital dynamic deliberative direct DEMOCRACY goto http://members.westnet.com.au/votedave |