I've heard the ebay Contact Info no longer has the address. That's right-->>Ebay just makes it easier for bad/scam sellers to SCAM. THAT MEANS AS A BUYER YOU NOW ARE DEALING WITH A TOTALLY ANONYMOUS PERSON. IT'S SCAM CITY ON EBAY. I CAN ONLY RECOMMEND THAT IF THAT PHONE NUMBER THAT'S GIVEN ON EBAY HAS NO PHYSICAL LOCATION IN THE YELLOW PAGES WHICH YOU HAVE VERIFIED, DO NOT SEND PAYMENT!! IN FACT, TELL YOURSELF 1000 TIMES TO NOT BID ON EBAY AFTER THAT!!

Another auction fraud "spyware" posted. Just another reason to never visit ebay:

Recently, I clicked on an auction for an expensive watch. The original ebay auction page appeared, and then the auction was re-directed to an exact replica of the auction from a non-ebay website.. If you logged on to place your bid, your ID and password were transmitted to another site outside of ebay. Just a heads up to all that if you are viewing an auction and the auction seems to automatically reload, make sure that you look at the address bar and make sure that you are logging on to an ebay site before you place a bid.

A Big Twist on the Phishing Scheme ----- article from another poster:

Phishers Suspected of eBay Germany Domain Hijack
By Jan Libbenga
Published Wednesday 1st September 2004 08:51 GMT

eBay Germany and German domain registry organization DeNIC are to investigate a partly successful domain hijacking scam that remained unnoticed for at least a couple of hours.

On Saturday, visitors to eBay Germany were redirected to a scam site hosted by IIntergenia AG. The German internet provider says criminals requested a DNS (domain name server) transfer for several high profile sites, including Google.com, Web.de, Amazon.com and eBay Germany. While most of the DNS transfers were denied, somehow eBay slipped through the net.

How the domain could have been transferred without the consent of the existing holder remains unclear. When a website decides to move its site to a new server it has to tell the DNS service its new IP address. Although this is largely an automated process, several measures are taken to prevent hijacking attempts.

Experts believe the goal of the hijacking was to fool users into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers and account usernames and passwords. Normally, these phishing attacks use spoofed emails to lure victims to fraudulent websites. The bogus site, which several visitors claimed to have seen, may also have tried to read login names and passwords of visitors from cookies on their PCs.

Although DeNIC corrected the transfer, eBay wants to know who's to blame. The immensely popular internet auctioneer and its users may have lost substantial revenue because the original site was unavailable for several hours.

The scam site officially belonged to a man from Niedersachsen, but he denies any involvement. The German state criminal police agency (Landeskriminalamt) is now starting an investigation too.

This is very worrisome, as day by day we are all becoming more dependent upon the Internet for both information and as a place to do business. It is especially concerning that a corporation as large as eBay found itself vulnerable!

A Picture = A Virus Sept 17 2004

Tiffany Update Sept 21 2004

NEGATIVE FEEDBACK REMOVED---It's always been an "open secret" known by a few sellers and buyers that well-known big commercial companies on ebay with the $$$ can have their negative feedback removed without any further review by any other agency by just paying ebay a certain amount of $$$. (Personally, I agree with this since there ARE flaky bidders and vengeful NPB type bidders as well as the fraudulent bidders/buyers and most large commercial companies CARE about their reputations.) But, this newest announcement is different. I guess ebay wants more money from the other sellers as well. This is a bad sign. As a buyer especially in a high-ticket section like automotives, remember this is is especially bad for the bidder/buyer and is another method of negative feedback tampering. It looks like ebay's much vaunted feedback system is losing its integrity, this time by ebay's own policies.
Sept 25 2004

CLICK ME TO BECOME A ZOMBIE SPAMMER--Another reason not to click on your email. Oct 11, 2004

Spammers, Phishers, and Spammers Uniting---An unethical 17-year old spammer/hacker's confessions October 14, 2004

50 Hackers steal 24 million dollars from people who clicked their emails

Phishers faking the address bar -- No it's not safe to check the website out thru the address bar.

2nd chance offer scams and a paragraph (in bold) about EMAIL HACKS THAT PHOTOGRAPH YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN November 1, 2004

I have REMOVED Aluria Eliminator software from recommended anti-spyware on my website since it has connections now with WhenU spyware. November 2, 2004

November 11, 2004 As of Tuesday, according to this article, Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 has been released and has a 1-click button to disable [under "Tools" under "Options" under "Web Features"] Java & Javascript (the code languages which hackers & phishers like to use) and is also more compatible with more "only-IE" sites compared with its older versions. It works using "tabbed browsing" where early sites are "tabbed" and you don't have to keep opening a new window and where you had a hard time waiting to go back to the early sites.

December 3, 2004 I know this isn't anything new but Fake SCO's(listed on the Index page as "Fake SCO's") are now becoming a common scammer's tool. Beware of any SCO offer or any other email coming to you from any ebay seller, even if it's a trusted ebay seller you've dealt with many times before. Thoroughly check WHO and WHERE this email is coming from.

December 12, 2004 New scam - You're on the website NOT!!