Michael Gracie

eBay has been successfully sued by Louis Vuitton & Company over brand fakes being sold on the site. eBay may have lost this case because the courts are unable to discern between platforms and the users of said platforms, but there’s a bigger issue at hand. eBay maintains that the companies suing them are more concerned with controlling their respective markets:

“If counterfeits appear on our site, we take them down swiftly,” eBay spokeswoman Sravanthi Agrawal said. “But today’s ruling is not about counterfeits. Today’s ruling is about an attempt by LVMH to protect uncompetitive commercial practices at the expense of consumer choice and the livelihood of law-abiding sellers that eBay empowers every day.”

I’m inclined to agree - everyone wishes they were DeBeers, but the way eBay is spins this could make one think they are the sole victim here. In actuality, I think that these litigants are inadvertently killing their own market with their efforts.

The luxury goods set, the primary targets here, rely on consistent turnover of their product to maintain their appeal. Each year new designs come out, and are paraded across magazines - the affluent, early adopters (the core customer base) are first to grab the goods. But these “must have now” industries don’t rely solely on the top tax bracket - if they did they wouldn’t bother advertising - instead they would rely on the word of mouth circling elite cocktail parties. No, there is a secondary market that wants to be like the elite, and their avenue for “upper-crustship” is simply looking the part. These wannabes can’t really afford draping the latest LV bag over their arm each and every season, but they mortgage themselves to the hilt to do so anyway.

And when the extraordinarily overpriced item shows up on the credit card bill, they pass on last season’s via any means they can to get that bill paid - one of those means just so happens to be an internet site called eBay. eBay is marketplace, and marketplaces provide liquidity - all Louis Vuitton and the rest of their ilk are doing when they sue eBay is reducing that liquidity. It’s no different than if the SEC, the NASD, and the Fortune 1000 got together and declared that secondary stock sales could no longer be executed via an online brokerage account - their shares would plummet thereafter.

I suspect the volume of brand-named handbags being hucked will start doing the same fairly soon.

UPDATE: Ditto.

UPDATE: Carlo Longino goes contrarian on Ooma. Meanwhile, I may be waiting a long time for that OS X bug…the “creator” is on the lam.

Google and eBay had a tiff, and it looks like eBay got their point across. But it brings up a bigger issue in my mind - how easy it is to advertise on the web can also be a web advertising broker’s undoing.

eBay pulled all its ads, in a heartbeat. Combine that with the ease of communication the internet provides (and how quickly information spreads), and you see how one big screwup can really cause pain. Imagine a bunch of web advertisers banding together to pull their ads from a broker because, say, their prices are artificially inflated, they lack transparency, or they provide terse responses to customer service questions (although I’m sure no brokers would dare do such a thing).

As for calling Google “wimps,” and eBay a “bully”… Google, wimps? Someone bullying them? Come on.

UPDATE: Another example.

We’ve seen them before, but let’s take another peek. This one is clever indeed.

According to recent report by Sophos, phishers are persistently targeting PayPal and eBay users. The reason? Ubiquity of the services. eBay is available in 27 countries, and I doubt there are many people who haven’t bought, sold, or at least browsed for goodies.

That’s a big market to go after. Add the fact that there are probably a lot of casual internet users (i.e. not so technologically sophistiicated) on eBay, and you have a big, targeted market for phishers.

I love stating the obvious.

I don’t suspect that someone with a 10,000+ positive rating at eBay would ever fall for a phishing exploit, but you never know. Someone did, and the pilfered account information was being hocked on a Russian website. Sunbelt found the site, and eBay got it knocked down. According to an eBay spokesperson, nobody knows how many accounts may have been misused - that generally means nobody’s talking.

I just recieved what is quite possibly the most intricately well produced phishing attempt I have ever seen. The HTML is so well formed, I was able to preserve it in all its glory within the Spamroll database! Please note: the Spamroll database and this link have been removed.

Please do not click on the links within. They likely work, and who knows what is behind them. If I had any dealings with eBay UK, I might have been snagged myself.

People are getting more capable, as far as identifying phishing attempts is concerned. It is a simple matter of experience. So when a huge internet company rejects someone’s claim of a phishing attempt, that person should trust their own judgement. It is better to be safe than sorry, and big companies just don’t get it anyway.

When in doubt, delete. Then move on.

After reading this article about eBay’s purchase of Skype, I beg the questions…is eBay really intending on selling Skype account details to junk callers? Does this mean they have sold eBay account information in the past?
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Ebay has long been a target for fraud. Some of it has to do with the gamey nature of eBay - everyone is looking for a “steal” of a deal, and some simply take it literally. As the market has become more liquid, it is less a place to find basement-price bargains, at least legitimately, but the auction format and reputation are still enough to fool some folks into buying non-existent goods at some ridiculously low price.

But of course, eBay and its cousin Paypal have also been the pawn in many phishing attempts. And like the tracking of a deadly disease, it would be interesting to hear how it got started and why, and what ebay is doing about it. Well now you can.
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