Ebay "Sniper Trap" Heads Up

[Mach]

This is sorta old but I just saw this happen on an auction that I was watching. Basically, a shill bidder runs up the auction bidding, flushing out the maximum bid, then retracts his bid once he learns what the max is. He can then come in later as another user and bid $1 below the max bid to make sure the seller gets the maximum. Pretty sleazy.

If you see someone bumping the bids by $2-5 at a time and then retract, its likely a shill bidder.

Iraq Museum International explains how a "Sniper Trap" was used in the
online sale of a fake Mesopotamian artifact, costing the victim thousands of
dollars.

(PRWEB) August 13, 2005 -- While monitoring online auction sites for the
sale of illegal artifacts from Mesopotamia, Iraq Museum International
(http://www.BaghdadMuseum.org) discovered a way that bidders on eBay can
influence the highest bid and cheat other bidders.

Using an eBay listing and its bidding history, Iraq Museum International
demonstrates how a 4-step price-fixing process led to the online sale of a
fake "Sumerian Stone Statue of a Seated Male" on eBay for $3,726 on Monday,
August 1, 2005.

Dubbed the "Sniper Trap," the process can be executed on eBay from any
computer in the world and involves the following steps for any auction
listing on the site:

1. The seller and a second person posing as a bidder prepare to precisely
synchronize their keystrokes on two separate computers logged onto eBay.

2. In the final minute of bidding, the person posing as a bidder places an
extremely high bid on the item. This has the effect of triggering all
automatic bids set by any other bidder, instantly revealing his or her
secret maximum bid.

3. Meanwhile, the seller has filled out a bid cancellation form at eBay, and
is ready at the keyboard with a finger over the "Enter" key. Within the last
30 seconds of the electronic auction the seller presses the key, submitting
the form to automatically cancel the bid placed by the false bidder.

4. During the few seconds while the false bid was in play, other bidders
would be deceived by what they saw: a high bid placed by the false bidder
that was only a few dollars higher than the maximum set by the real high
bidder. Thus, the last-second bidder, or "sniper," would know that he or she
would have to bid over that amount in order to win the auction.

This method would account for higher-than-normal bids placed during the
final 30 seconds of an auction on eBay.

EBay is the Internet's largest auction site, with over 114 million
registered members worldwide.

Iraq Museum International is a volunteer organization created after the
looting of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad. It seeks to accelerate the
recovery of Iraq's stolen treasures by bringing the rich history and
cultural heritage of Iraq to the world. It invites the active participation
of the Iraq reconstruction community as well as students, professors,
professionals and cultural enthusiasts from all countries. To see how a
variation of the "Sniper Trap" played out in eBay's antiquities market,
visit Iraq Museum International at http://www.BaghdadMuseum.org.

[Quakken]

If you don't want your maximum bid to be reached and you think it too high, then don't bid such a high maximum.

[Mach]

Not bidding so high is one way to solve the problem. I prefer to snipe with 3rd party service but that's not to everyone's liking.

[Scotty]

winning bids on eBay is a breeze, 2 windows open, one constantly refreshing a watch and a button ready to be clicked only failed once.

Also never use round amounts, put something stupid like £53.72 always works

[Greco101]

oops. lol.

[Quakken]

no, don't be sad about us telling you that it's bad for consumers, telling us helps us be better sellers, getting the most out of each auction, if you want to play the system a little bit.

[xmastree]

I fell foul of a similar thing recently. I bid on a TV, £51. I was outbid so I gave up on it and bought another on a BIN.
Then the high bidder retracted his bid and put one just below what he knew my highest was. That bidder had completed quite a few transactions with the seller, too.

So I ended up winning this one too, having already collected the BIN one. I suggested that the seller offer it to the next bidder (before I had figured out what was going on) but obviously he didn't accept that.

So, I confronted him about his actions and reported it to eBay who assured me they have taken the necessary action. Whatever that is...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=320162399598 if you want to see the listing. Check the bidding history, and the winner and seller's feedback.

[alexanderH]

I fell foul of a similar thing recently. I bid on a TV, £51. I was outbid so I gave up on it and bought another on a BIN.
Then the high bidder retracted his bid and put one just below what he knew my highest was. That bidder had completed quite a few transactions with the seller, too.

So I ended up winning this one too, having already collected the BIN one. I suggested that the seller offer it to the next bidder (before I had figured out what was going on) but obviously he didn't accept that.

So, I confronted him about his actions and reported it to eBay who assured me they have taken the necessary action. Whatever that is...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=320162399598 if you want to see the listing. Check the bidding history, and the winner and seller's feedback.

That's dirty fishy. For the most part I tend to stick to sellers who have much higher rep. But you were good to notice that, always check before paying because this seems to happen a lot.
Luckily it hasnt yet happened to me.

Not bidding so high is one way to solve the problem. I prefer to snipe with 3rd party service but that's not to everyone's liking.

The problem is that with legitimate auctions, you put your max bid in at say ~50$ In a legit aucation if everyone else decides the max they want to bid is 40$ than you win and get it for 41$. But people are abusing that fact, which means you now have to watch auctions.