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eBay vs. Romania's Online Scammers
spinctrl links to an interesting story in the L.A. Times about the cloak-and-daggerism of fighting online scams in Romania, summing it up like this: "The country is the top source of auction site scams. One company is trying to do something about it, with increasing collaboration from local law enforcement over recent years. Ebay has sent over equipment and a team to help the authorities combat this form of cyber crime, which is run with all the organization of an industrial-scale business."
You'd think Nigeria would have a host of auction scammers.
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I'm all for something being done about the scammers, eBay sometimes looks like all it cares about is getting their own share of the auction price. However what I don't understand is that people still fall for these scams, even the tiniest amount of logic applied before sending money to the scammers would eliminate >90% of the cases. Havn't everyone by now heard about, "If it's too good to be true, it proberly is"?
Resistance is not futile - www.gnu.org
It always amazes me the effort criminals use to commit crimes. However, I finally realized what the issue is and it comes right back down to supply and demand.
....
The demand for legal use of the skills required to pull this off, is already saturated with the supply of legal workforce, so the criminal moves to a more lucrative marketplace, the black market. When applying the same skill level and effort of his legal counterparts, the criminal maximizes his/her profit potential by moving to a marketplace that has much lower supplies.
The only thing that can counter act this phenomenon is making getting caught extremely expensive, thus driving up the "cost" of the black marketplace. I suggest to you, that financial or incarceration penalties are not nearly enough to drive the markets to unprofitability, that it requires something more costly and more effective
I'll leave the particulars up everyone else to ponder.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
... his best joke was:
What's the recipe for a Romanian omelette?
Step 1: steal a dozen eggs.
First mistake is assuming you can educate enough of the people to make it not profitable. Second mistake is assuming education itself can cure self serving nature. The whole point of these types of crime is that it feeds upon peoples desire to maximize profit / savings.
Do people really think that they can buy Photoshop for $99 when it is sold everywhere else for $299? or Vista Super Delux for $49.95 when there is no such product? Most people know when they're about to be had, but they have this override switch in their brain that tells them that this is the "exception".
I'm sorry, but I have little sympathy for people being had by Nigerian, Online Pharmaceutical, Sexy Girl, Cheap Software scams.
Ebay has always scared me a bit, because you just don't know who you're dealing with. However your suggestions are certainly a good place to start. It will not ever solve the problem because the problem is human nature.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Let's teach people about tech so they don't ask irritating questions and make the same mistakes.
Why stop there, though? Let's teach people about economics so there are no more money problems. Then we should teach them how to drive so they don't have auto accidents. Perhaps we could teach them about copyright law so there is no more maf-IAA... etc. Point being that educating the general populace and getting them to act on their newfound knowledge is usually easier said than done.
Slashdot story about ebay sitting on its hands and doing nothing when given proof of fraud, complete with stories from slashdotters who used to work for ebay: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/16/1316203&tid=95&tid=98&tid=123
This guy adds in his own personal experience, where eBay wanted a $25 fee to handle a fraud case: http://danwarne.com/ebay-fraud-under-scrutiny/
In 2002, ebay sits on its hands and does nothing when given evidence of fraud: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078736/
FTC says Ebay is the #1 source of online fraud complaints (circa 2003): http://www.news.com/FTC,-states-take-on-online-auction-fraud/2100-1017_3-999009.html
Still a problem in 2004: http://www.nclnet.org/news/2004/internet_fraud_stats.htm
...and the beat goes on! Just google "ebay fraud" and see hundreds of news stories and personal accounts...
I recall reading a few years ago that eBay was a source of something like 75% of all complaints about online fraud. Just yesterday I saw an item for sale by a guy with a positive rating of something like 24,000. Unless he's selling 6 items a day for the last 10 years, I see nothing has changed.
Please help metamoderate.
The article sort of looks like an Ebay ad. So, the billion dollar corporation has devoted one (whole) employee to fighting Romanian scammers and donated some pc's etc to the local police. Unless that one person is John Rambo, this is not enough. It is however enough for Ebay to claim "hey look, we 're doing something, when we don't even really have to".
From the horror stories I have heard from people around me about Paypal (owned by Ebay) scams and the indifference with which Paypal deals (or more accurately does not deal) with them, I know that Ebay is doing far less than it should, even when their own payment system is involved, and even when the scammers are here in the US. Deal with that first - it is so much easier - and stop BSing us about hunting down Western Union scammers in Romania...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Why do I suspect that much of this donated equipment has gone straight to the scammers. An operation as big as they say pretty much has to involve the "authorities".
Can you tell my mom to pick up some milk on her way back from the hotel?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The amazing thing is that in Romania, Russia, China, as well as other countries-- online fraud is a full-time business with real offices and employees and everything, just like your job but the mission statement of "the company" is to make money by devising and executing online fraud. They have R&D teams that come up with incredibly sophisticated attacks and they have teams to execute the existing plans, etc. The employees get vacation time, salary, benefits, everything. It's an actual real job, it's basically a wing of organized crime, not just some guy in a basement outsmarting the security folk at ebay. The local politicians are greased to look the other way and impede law enforcement, which is what makes it so difficult to shut them down. There are ISPs in Russia _known_ to be owned by the mob. It takes serious anti-fraud resources to combat these people.
What's really annoying about eBay is selling. When you buy from eBay, it's easy to know if you are going to get scammed (providing you use some common sense). A buyer from Jersey needs payment sent to India? I'm out. But selling is a whole other issue.
I had this one incident where I was selling something and the winning bidder looked pretty trustworthy; a few dozen positive feedbacks, a member for 2-3 years, from the States, the whole deal. So a few hours after the auction ends I get an email saying they needed the item shipped to India because they were visiting family and didn't want the item sent to an empty house. To the average, non-common sense using user, this might seem like a reasonable request but it's bullshit.
So I refused the deal, reported the account to eBay and the next day got an email saying the real account owner's account had been "compromised" and that they were looking into it. What really sucked is that it took 2 months to get a refund for the cost of putting up the auction (listing fees), and the final value fee from when the item sold. Since it was kind of an expensive item, and eBay already rapes it's users on fees, I was out something like $30 until it was finally refunded.
So again, buyers can avoid trouble with common sense, but wheres the protection for sellers? We can't tell off the bat when someone steals a legit user's account and then tries scamming us AFTER the fact.
I really hate eBay.
I happen to be living in Moldova, a small country which probably scores worse than Romania if you check it with your "country-o-meter".Romania is our Western neighbor (the really long story is that our countries used to be united, but this is just FYI).
A lot of times I have to deal with the fact that an online-store does not deliver to Moldova, so either I have to know someone abroad (who lives in a "good" country and can make the purchase for me) or forget about the product.
But hey, we're people too! We are intelligent, reasonable, we have feelings, we trust other people, and other people trust us. Simply 'blacklisting' a country is not a good solution, because it still leaves a lot of unhappy folk.
I even had cases in which some companies refused to sell software (no export control regulations involved), all they have to do is send me an email with the registration number _after_ the money is transferred to their account; but no...
What the hell will I do? Stick my hand into "teh tubes", grab their necks and then suck them into the abyss?
In other words, item#1 in your list should be removed, imho.
The saddest poem
Somewhat off topic, but a roommate of mine who was into buying high end photo equipment on ebay, and had a friend who got ripped off in a big way.
He found some equipment he was interested in buying, bid on it, or "buy it now"'ed it. He contacted the seller for payment info, since the price was around $10,000. The seller was anxious to ship the stuff, and got his ship to address, so he could get it out. The seller contacted him sometime before payment was sent, but after he had the ship to address (which happened to be his home address.)
About a week later, his house was broken into, and all his existing high end photo equipment was stolen.
Of course, the timing could be coincidental, but it's interesting that the auction was cancelled in such a way, once the seller had the address of someone who's buying high end photo equipment...what are the chances the buyer has more high end equipment lying around?
not really... our gypsies (the ones that are not dirt poor) are rarely "high tech", they make their money by sending their children to beg and pick pockets, stealing cars abroad and selling them here, robbing and stealing from our Italian ans Spanish friends; some of them may be at the top of the scamming groups, organizing the business, or at the bottom, acting as decoys that receive the money (the decoys are the ones that usually get to serve time in jail).
Most of the ones collecting the stupidity tax from the US are actually Romanian kids, 13 to 20-22 years old; after the age of 18 many quit, because it's more risky (while they are minors the police can't do much to them, they aren't even allowed to beat the crap out of suspects nowadays), or get in the back, taking care of creating fake escrow sites, handling relations, etc...
The locals call them "hackers" because they use computers and do something bad, but they aren't really that computer literate (my brother had a classmate that needed someone else to start the computer and browser for him, and yet was highly successful in the scamming business), all they need is a web browser and a WYSIWYG html editor like Dreamweaver for creating their escrow sites.
Wrong, the problem is slowly solving itself, as things evolve: the first item a kid that made an assload of money buys is a fast car, and a lot have died in car accidents, some more went to jail for 1-2 years (and our prisons aren't pretty); also, money laundering is a lot harder due to our EU membership.
I have a good friend living in Romania. She's not a scammer, nor works for a scamming company, but because of Romania's label as a scamming country, internet usage can be very hard for her. For instance, Romanian credit cards are worthless on the Internet, even though she will pay for the goods she purchases.
I'm figuring things might get a smidge easier now that Romania is part of the EU. It would still be nice if she could validate in some way that she was a good customer, rather than a "Romanian customer"
And if I decide to scam you with paypal how is it any different?
All I need to open an Emigrant Direct account is a few numbers (which probably aren't hard to come by). I can link the paypal account to the emigrant direct account then flush it out from there.
Congratulations, so ebay knows you've paid. If the money isn't in the account, it's gone. Kiss it good by. Ask me how my Shiny new G5 tower is that I never got. I went through PayPal I was young and dumb. I got the stamp of approval of a "protected" auction.
I'm now short $2k and a G5. Nothing seemed to good to be true... PayPal was thankfully able to recover $200 out of the account.
Thanks PayPal!
Using car crashes as a solution is funny, but seriously now--I live in Romania and one thing I can testify for is that no sane person wants anything to do with the legal system here. I don't mean it's crazy with overuse like in the US; I mean it's corrupt to the gills. The side that shells out the most dough wins, period. A [successful] eBay scammer will have no problem paying his way out of a tight spot.
Where cybercrime is concerned the problem is compounded by the fact the Police is near computer-illiterate, a sad truth which also applies to a large part of the population; but I digress. Also consider corrupt politicians and officials who are just as computer-illiterate themselves and have no interest whatsoever in fighting something so abstract as computer crimes when they could spend the time stealing public money and fighting each other.
So it comes down that the only cyber-criminals ever punished are those who couldn't afford to pay the right people; it's a paradox of a corrupt system: the more you steal, the safer you are. Or, some exceedingly stupid individuals that manage to get the FBI involved and are made an example of as a token of ass-kissing from the pro-American local Government.
Romania made it into the EU as a buffer to the Russian zone, as a marketplace for the other EU countries and as a source of cheap labor. It has absolutely nothing else to offer that the EU didn't already have bigger and better.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
Am I the only one finding Ebay is more expensive than the normal on-line shops or even real retail shops. I recently decided to purchase a HP C6180 printer (works great with Linux) and the best price I found was AU$249 from a normal big brand retail chain. When I looked as Ebay the best (buy now) price was over AU$329 at the time with the best on-line retailer price being AU$304 (with another printer thrown in as a bonus). Im finding that if you want to buy any "new" product, ebay is the worst place to go if you want to save money. On the other hand second hand goods on ebay can sometimes be a good deal.