How is possible that eBay can't stop these criminals

[camera4allstore]

I am seeing this on a daily basis (check the attached picture). These criminals take over the eBay user account, they list THOUSANDS of items with email links inside those listings asking people to contact them. Certainly they don't have any of the items listed. They just need buyers credit card info. How in the world eBay allows them to put a live email link in the listing without triggering any of their robots. One time I tried to give my buyer the eBay item number for my other listing, they blocked my message telling me you can't share the phone number with your buyer. This is insane. I wonder how many people gets robbed this way.

[hurryagain]

Indeed, there are many scammers in this day and age, made even worse by the covid situation.

Unfortunately, people do need to be aware and keep themselves informed.  Unless a person has not purchased items on line before AND has not ever bothered to watch the news, people should be aware that any link taking you to another site should always be avoided and texts wanting you to complete transactions off site are always a red flag that you are about to be scammed.

Any seller wanting you to pay them with eBay gift cards is another... and the list goes on & on...

I guess if one does not want to educate themselves, they BETTER be using a CC to do their purchases.

We all need to take a wee bit of personal responsibly to help protect ourselves and others which is why there is a community here ready to help educate those who need it.

I am constantly learning new things within the eBay community.  There are many here with some amazing knowledge and skills and who are so willing to volunteer their time with no pay other than the thanks they get which is awesome pay in itself.

We can only hope that buyers stop by and take a look at the posts here from time to time.

@camera4allstore 

[eburtonlab]

Typically such listings do not include live links, but rather an email address embedded in an image file to make it more difficult to scan than plain text. I cannot tell from your screenshot whether the email address is an image or if it is broken up in html with invisible text to make it difficult to scan. Scammers are highly motivated and resourceful when it comes to getting around any roadblocks that eBay puts up, and when one scammer finds a workaround, it winds up being copied by others until eBay can find a way to block it.

Since those listings are posted on hijacked accounts for the most part, eBay has nothing to link back to the actual scammers other than an ever changing throw-away email address.

eBay can pull down the listings, but the scammers only need to hijack another account to begin posting again. That is how the scammers continue to get away with it.

[camera4allstore]

The email is 

the email is not an image, that's why I am so surprised that eBay is not able to catch them while listing the items. The item number in this case is 333911319885. eBay should force every user to change the password every three months to at least slow down these criminals. 

[ittybitnot]

I am seeing this on a daily basis (check the attached picture).

@camera4allstore 

I don't see your attached picture, but I know what you are speaking about anyway.  The same thing has been going on for years.  They use new accounts, they use old  dormant accounts hijacked from both buyers and sellers, and they use active hijacked IDs/ accounts and sell their $5000 "vapor" items right along with a live account who is actively selling used children's clothing. 

They are not interested in selling or having bids on the site, but mainly getting the cash by unsuspecting people that think they are really going to get that $15K item for  $5000.  They probably "sell" lots of them before the listing is discovered and taken down.  Recent ones I have seen have been in golf clubs, bit coin mining machines, and camera equipment and coins.  A quick look at ended or sold listings of the same title will often show you the ones that they already tried. 

For a while their  repeatable "contact me, don't bid, use this email, etc. blurb/ info was merely a picture of the text and had no live links.  For the past few days, though I have seen them with the same old clickable text and live links like you say.  

I will report them if I should run across them, but don't actively seek them out.  There was a time long ago that I did  figuring I was "doing my part" to keep ebay a safe place to buy and sell.  One could simply do a search title/description using one word that they all consistently misspelled and turn up a few thousand every couple of hours 24/7/365.  One would load a list of  30 pages or more of "vapor" items in a tidy alphabetical ordered format at a time many times a day under different user IDs.  There were scam sellers of all sorts.  

You would be correct in thinking that after all these years ebay would have the technology for preventing this sort of thing.   

[camera4allstore]

I see them every day several times a day. It's a same scammer with an email i­­­­­­­n­­­­­­­f­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­@­­­­­­­p­­­­­­­a­­­­­­­w­­­­­­­n­­­­­­­-­­­­­­­s­­­­­­­h­­­­­­­o­­­­­­­p­­­­­­­.­­­­­­­p­­­­­­­r­­­­­­­o  The email in the listing can be copied and paste which means it's not an image.  Two months ago' I've contacted their web site hosting company but nothing has been done. Since they are listing the items directly competing with me on eBay, the next step is to contact FBI and IC3. Somebody must do something about it if eBay can't or won't

[eburtonlab]

When I search eBay for that email address, or any exact line of text, I get no current results with that text, despite the fact that the listing is still live (at the moment I type this).

If you open that individual listing and examine the page source, the word "pawn" does not appear at all. None of the text from the body of the description is searchable, which makes it hard to find other instances.

eBay should force every user to change the password every three months to at least slow down these criminals.

The scammers just need a victim to fall for a phishing scam once to be able to take over an account; eBay could require users to change their passwords every day and it would not stop phishing scams. The turn-around time between getting the account credentials and the first listings going up is likely a matter of hours.

[camera4allstore]

This is the listing.  I was able to copy paste the email address from the listing. Right click on the description and click on "Frame source" There is an email Pawn-shop.pro in the HTML code. So eBay supposed to block listing with an active email in it. 

[a_c_green]

---

@eburtonlab wrote:

If you open that individual listing and examine the page source, the word "pawn" does not appear at all. None of the text from the body of the description is searchable, which makes it hard to find other instances.

---

They're using non-printable characters in between the visible ones in order to block text searches as you described. For example, the word "pawn" that you were looking for is actually planted in the description like this, where each hyphen below represents a non-printable character value: 

p-------a-------w-------n--------

The non-printable characters don't block reading of the visible text (and you can copy-and-paste them even though you can't see them on-screen), but they will ensure that anyone looking for a piece of the incriminating text won't find it.

[camera4allstore]

This is the screenshot of the source code from eBay listing. There is no masking of the email 

[eburtonlab]

This search does not find it:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=info%40pawn-shop.pro+-qqq&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=1&_os...

That above result is when I type in the email address by hand.

If I copy and paste from the body of the listing, this is the result:

Here is what happens when I type 

info@pawn-shop.pro

into a text to ascii converter:

Now here is what happens when I copy the actual email address from the body of the listing:

Lots of non-printable (and non-searchable) characters between the printable letters.

Scammers are resourceful and persistent.

[camera4allstore]

It took eBay 20 hours to remove the listings!!!

Yesterday I filled out the report with IC3, Neustar.com (their web hosting company, Namecheap.com (their domain hosting company). If you are eBay seller and care about eBay reputation, you can also send an email to abuse@namecheap.com and wan.engineering@neustar.biz about web site Pawn-shop.pro

I found out that these guys operate from Venezuela defrauding American people. 

[eburtonlab]

...and they're back:

[piotr1357]

I just reported one of their listings again.  It's so frustrating because they keep listing a rare item that very rarely shows up for sale used and keep teasing me with it.