eBay’s Trust and Safety team is charged with ensuring a safe, global trading marketplace and keeping the bad guys (fraudsters, spammers, counterfeiters) at bay. Seems like the holidays are putting TnS into a fighting spirit with several new initiatives under way.

Hidden Bidder on eBayEarlier this month, as announced by eBay’s Rob Chestnut, eBay began rolling out its Safeguarding Member IDs project (”Buyer Anonymizer Ray Gun” as a project name came in as a close second) on eBay Motors for listings with a bid of $200 or higher (with plans to extend this to eBay.com in early 2007). Anyone but the seller will now only see anonymized bidder information, making it impossible for phishers to scam user IDs from unsuspecting eBay buyers (most prominently through fake Second Chance Offers).

  1. On the bid history page for each listing we’ll replace User IDs with aliases (such as Bidder 1, Bidder 2 and Bidder 3) in the order that bidders place their first bid.
  2. In My eBay, members will no longer have access to the high-bidder column from bid and watch tables.
  3. On the item page, you’ll only be able to see the high-bidder ID if you are the signed-in seller of the item or the signed-in high bidder.
  4. Through the Advanced Search by Bidder link, we’ll only show completed listings within the last 30 days.

Now there are signs that eBay is moving to the next frontier of consumer concern: counterfeiting. Our very own Scot Wingo reports that eBay is planning some significant changes possibly this week to make selling of counterfeit goods much more difficult:

  1. Paypal verification will be required to list more than one item that is often counterfeited – don’t have to accept paypal, just have to be verified. This will give ebay a higher level of knowledge of the seller (presumably allowing them to track bad guys better and stop them from opening account after account with different basic info).
  2. Seller review – sellers will be limited to listing a small number of items until the sellers account has undergone an initial review. Once you list an item, you will go under review (by TnS I’m guessing - they are going to look for past issues I’m betting to gauge the seller’s trustable).
  3. 1-3 day listings done - Elimination of 1 and 3 day listings of these items that are often counterfeited by all sellers.
  4. Restricting of cross-border trade - HK/china specifically (e.g. won’t be able to sell to china from Europe, from China to Europe, etc. (China is the source of lots of counterfeits from what I’ve heard).

All very good steps towards building a better, safer and stronger marketplace.

Quick update (11/29): Ina Steiner at AuctionBytes has a good write-up of these changes and also comments from eBay staff on why these changes are being made.

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