eBay Sellers: Spoof Protection for your buyers and reputation!

Over the last year or so, phishing and spoof emails have reached an epidemic level. These emails are made to look like they are coming from legitimate companies (i.e. eBay & PayPal) and they almost look legit with standard formatting and logos. The problem is they are being sent by criminals looking to hijack your account, purchase merchandise, steal your identity and/or drain your bank accounts.

Many financial institutions & eBay have done a commendable job alerting the general public of this threat. In regards to eBay, most of these emails are targeting bidders and buyers. As a seller you may not think this affects you, but it does and there are some things you can to help.

The biggest spoof scam on eBay nowadays is fake “Second Chance Offers”. Sellers of high-ticket items are generally the targets of this scam. I have seen as many as 3-4 bidders on one of my auctions receiving these fake offers. This creates confusion, frustration and general distrust that is targeted at the seller even though they didn’t send the emails. Here are some tips to prevent this.

If you know your auction item is going to sell for several hundred dollars or more then protect your bidder’s identities by making your auction private. This can be done when creating the listing. You can find it in eBay’s “Sell Your Item” page on Step 3 under Private Listing. Once the item is listed on eBay and you receive bids, only the seller can see the ID’s of the bidders. The listing will show the number of bids and it will state that it is private (see picture below). Making an auction private will also prevent other members from sending fraudulent emails to your bidders.



You should state somewhere in your listing a disclaimer as to why the auction was made private. This disclaimer also helps alleviate any confusion or thoughts of shill bidding. This the disclaimer I use in my auctions…

"This auction was made private to protect our bidders from spamming and fake offers from other members."

Be proactive and protect your bidders and your reputation! Sell Smarter.