I'm going to call this a technical issue, well, because it really is.

[asynchrousman]

Every few days some party tries to game the system with obviously fraudulent sales at a few dollars starting or BIN for things like classic synthesizers or audio gear like early stereo speakers. It's easy to tell when they show in a search email  and you just about know the item will be removed.

It's the same stuff every time, right down to a picture of a saddle that is always used for one listing.

So WHY do these things actually get listed and show in the email searches at all? There have got to be some filters that find this stuff and flag it, or at least leave it out of the emails altogether!

When this ATTACK happens it tends to leave absolutely valid and worthy listings out and it gives the entire community a hard time, knowing that some troll can wreck search with non-existant stuff.

I was sure that this would be over after the Alisher71 fiasco!

eBay CAN and MUST do better!!!

[dollybeauty]

Alisher71 was 13 years ago. Were you affected by it?

Most inaccurate search results are caused by the search parameters.

[asynchrousman]

How would you filter these? You have no user ID, they are probably canned and keep registering as different users, and if I filter by title than ACTUAL SALES will be excluded.

The emails need to be vetted first. And I actually reported this originally to eBay when they started appearing a few YEARS ago. I even contacted that 'member' and found their response pretty fishy, so I reported it.

You don't understand that many searches don't even have 20 hits in a day, but when they are populated with junk, someone's REAL auctions are going to be passed over for lack of trust.

It's not a trivial settings change.

It doesn't matter that I had nothing to do with Alisher71, I have no interest in Apple stuff and such anyhow and it's not in my range of income even. But that incident is a constant reminder that eBay and the Community must always remain vigilent.

[dollybeauty]

LOL My search knowledge is limited. You might try on the Buying discussion boards for the best way to filter searches. They can be of more help than I.

[asynchrousman]

Again, it's not a search filtering issue on my end, but thank you for replying.

[thatsallfolks]

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@dollybeautywrote:

Alisher71 was 13 years ago. Were you affected by it?

Most inaccurate search results are caused by the search parameters.

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The search isn't inaccurate because it returns items that match the paramters but are scams. The items belong in the results; but they should never get past the listing bots in the first place.

I see one pop up in one of my searches every few days. Hijacked account, active and successful seller, suddenly lists several million (yes, million) dollars of motorcycles, cameras, etc., none of which they normally sell.

My search parameters are just fine, but thanks for your wisdom.

[asynchrousman]

The only answer qould be for eBay to delay search emails or develop better methods. They have said that the email results are supposed to be random but they are simply the top 20 recently posted.

There is a picture of a SADDLE that usually comes up with a fake Korg Oasys synth auction listing. That should be an instant flag.

I know that some perfectly legitimate sellers like to use a picture of their pet or some other image, often to prevent people from just copying the image instead of buying a print.  Others have placed watermarks over the entire image so that you couldn't do that. It remains to be seen how watermarking your ID is different that placing COPY over the image. It's awfully hard to protect your physical print sales like that.

But it too presents a problem. eBay says that this will be disallowed soon, to what degree?

[asynchrousman]

They're BAAAAAAAAAAACK!