eBay Claims Fraud Isn't a Major Problem

eBay and tales of fraud have been surfacing on the internet. (Computing Which?) was one of the magazines, who published one of these stories and eBay is responding to it:

Here part of their response to this article, as written in a recent E-Commerce article:

"eBay, however, said the magazine failed to distinguish between actual eBay sales and sales made outside of the eBay community by buyers and sellers who find one another on the site. The eBay user pages clearly warn against such sales, which happen outside of the protections of the community, such as the right of users to complain when a sale isn't completed or to stop payment when eBay's PayPal is used to consummate a purchase."

Here is the full response by eBay as published in the E-Commerce article:

EBay Disputes Report of Rampant Fraud

I have written numerous posts about fraud on eBay and have discovered that there are a lot of pretty upset customers, who have become victims of internet fraud.

These posts can be found by keyword "eBay" at the top of this page.

There is no doubt that eBay does work with law enforcement, but even they have even been quoted as saying that the information takes too long to get in order to be effective.

eBay and PayPal AND their customers have long been the target of phishing attacks, which lead to account takeovers and further criminal activity. The site is also used to sell a lot of counterfeit merchandise and reports abound of junk being sold via the site.

They argue that they do a lot to prevent fraud on their site, but as I have said, there are still a lot of victims being created, daily.

Perhaps, the answer is to spend a little of the money created by their growth on security, which should include a zero tolerance policy towards fraud. This should include a greater emphasis on creating awareness and apprehending those, who regularly use their business platform to commit fraud.

The very fact that the article from E-Commerce quotes them as saying their business continues to grow indicates that there is money to provide a safer environment for their customers.

If they were a normal retail operation and people were getting robbed when shopping inside their establishment, it wouldn't be long before they enhanced their security to provide a safe shopping environment. IF they failed to do this, they would suffer a loss of business AND or litigation.

Although, the four walls of the internet are slightly larger, the same principle should apply.