Ebay shill bidding

In the online auction marketplace, shill bidding is the corrupt practise of bidding on your own items or having friends (or other corrupt associates) bid on your items, purely to artificially inflate the final price and make the legitimate buyers pay more for the item you're selling.

Shill bidding is probably most widespread on Ebay, the worlds largest online auction site. While Ebay have largely downplayed the fact that shill bidding seemingly still occurs on their network, buyers continue to complain about it's regularity, despite Ebay's allegedly sophisticated detection methods.

So how do you spot a shill bid?

Let's explore a single item. A common piece of software: Windows XP Professional SP2, as auctioned by a seller identified as "jenifer7286" and eventually sold on August 18 2006. If we look at the bidding history for the item, we'll notice a handful of things which could be interpreted as peculiar:

  • The buyer known as "4dafoe61" appeared to make two "strategic" bids but failed to win the auction.
  • The buyer known as "4dafoe61" has never won any auction items on Ebay since registering on June 13 2004.
  • The buyer known as "4dafoe61" used to be known as "andreanastars" prior to March 30 2006.
  • The buyer known as "4dafoe61" has bid on eight auction items in total, with seven of those by the same seller, "jenifer7286" and all for Microsoft software.

Is this an example of shill bidding?

I'm not certain but when you take into account the above facts, it looks a bit dodgy, don't you think? Especially when you consider that the buyer known as "4dafoe61" was actually the highest bidder at another auction for a copy of Windows XP Professional SP2 on August 17 2006. What's strange about that? The seller was "jenifer7286" once again, for one. There's also no mutual feedback, which often indicates that the buyer had retracted their winning bid after the auction had ended.

Of course, it could also merely be a striking occurrence of a bunch of events at the one time and apparently by mere chance. Decide for yourself.

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About the author

Ivan's mugshotI'm Ivan Lutrov and I'm the owner of Lutrov Interactive. I have 25 years of experience producing interactive work and I create cost effective business websites that are simple, engaging and easy to use. I practice what I preach and I say what I really think, even if it's sometimes not what you want to hear. Subscribe to the Lutrov Interactive feed via RSS and follow me on Twitter.