Protecting Yourself from eBay Auction Scams: Essential Guide

An educated consumer is a safe consumer. In that spirit, here is Forbes ASAP's complete guide to the dark side of online auction trading. "The average person who uses eBay is just completely ignorant," says one frequent seller (who, like . . . An educated consumer is a safe consumer. In that spirit, here is Forbes ASAP's complete guide to the dark side of online auction trading. "The average person who uses eBay is just completely ignorant," says one frequent seller (who, like many of the people interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because of his dependence on eBay for his livelihood). Part of the problem is that eBay is growing so rapidly that a high percentage of its users are newbies ill-prepared to defend themselves against the unfamiliar tactics of the online unscrupulous. "Novice buyers are the biggest victims," says Rodrigo Sales, CEO of AuctionWatch, an online service that helps buyers and sellers manage their auction transactions.

Unfortunately, some eBay users are unconcerned about scams because they've simply adopted many of the sleazy tactics themselves. Almost every one of more than a dozen experienced buyers and sellers I've spoken to admitted to sometimes using at least one blatantly unethical tactic, and several confessed to activity that could conceivably be prosecuted as felony fraud in most states.

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