03-12-2007, 12:42 PM
Quote:A popular tool used to track eBay auction activity has shown some extreme deviations since the end of February, and some are speculating that the cause is due to account-hijacking or hackers. The unusual listing behavior comes at a time when eBay is fighting "Vladuz," a Romanian that eBay says is a known criminal.
The Medved Auction Count chart for the month of February show auctions fluctuating between 12,000 and 14,000 listings. Mike Medved, who publishes the charts, said he had no idea what was causing the eBay listing swings. "The program just looks at numbers that show up on eBay's web pages, and they are the ones that swing like this - and this is not one page, it is 30 different pages too" (http://www.medved.net/cgi-bin/cal.exe?EIND).
Bloggers who follow eBay have been commenting on the unusual behavior and have speculated that it is caused by a cycle of fraudsters listing many auctions under hijacked seller accounts, and eBay taking them down...
full article: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m03/i12/s01