Friday 31 August 2012

Introduction

This blog has been created to provide a permanent home for eBay listings (and their associated images) that regularly turn up to catch unwary bidders. The listings in question often use images that Google Image Search struggles to find matches for, but by keeping copies here hopefully it'll make it easier to spot the scams (as Google will have something to match against if they re-use images), easier to prove to eBay that they ARE scams (because the listing numbers are here, eBay staff should still be able to check these if you provide them, even if they're "no longer available") and harder for the scammers to catch people out.

As more entries appear you'll start to see a pattern emerging.

Please feel free to report the items yourself, either by going to the item then clicking on the "Report item" link on the right-hand side a bit further down from the Seller Information box, or by clicking here and choosing "Chat with us" or "Send us an email" on the right-hand side. These are useful if you have other listings (or stolen images) to compare with, as you can provide these details via the Chat or Email methods, something you can't do with the conventional "Report item" button.

Emailing the fraudulent item number together with the item number of an identical, previously-deleted item seems to be particularly effective at triggering a response.

The more people report the items the quicker they'll get kicked off eBay.