Ok first the disclaimer, I do work for eBay though I have no specific or internal knowledge of this particular case.
The part of the article here that caught my eye was "One forum thread from Friday pointed to a California-based seller known as sdc_prod_434012 with no previous eBay transactions whose new listings did not allow users to actually bid on his items."
Like I said I don't have any specific knowledge of this user or case but lets consider the facts and possibilities here. Its a user with 0 feedback, who has apparently never bought or sold a single item on eBay, despite being registered on the site for almost a year now. Then one morning he suddenly wakes up and in a brilliant display of speed and efficiency posts 35000 items for sale at once. Now then, is it more likely that this is:
a) An ambitious new user who was waiting for just the right moment to post his entire inventory for sale. b) A scammer who is trying to get as many quick fraudulent buy-it-now transactions as he can before being noticed by the security filters.
I'd be willing to bet the correct answer is b, and that the anti-fraud programs correctly detected this user and disabled his items before people were able to bid on them. If this was a legitimate user then its unfortunate and I'm sure that customer service is apologizing profusely, but in 99 out of 100 cases like this its just your garden variety scammer and the fraud detection programs at eBay worked exactly as they were supposed to.
Registering random domain names won't accomplish anything, nor will registering variants of nsi-sucks.com. Nobody cares.
However, if you were to search for some radical political domain names, something insulting of current political figures or supportive of all the various groups and countries that we like to call enemies these days. Then send links to various news organizations showing that these radical domain names are all owned by NSI. Bill O'Reilley and Rush would have a ball with this.
How about a whole battery of pro-abortion domains, and then send the whois screenshots to various vocal church groups? "See? All owned by Network Solutions!"
How about some nasty racist domains and then send the whois info to the NAACP and such. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are always looking for their next photo op and sound bite.
This is very simple actually: Get renters' insurance and stop worrying about all the rest of it. Bottom line is that there's just no way to ensure in a dorm environment that everything is safe. Even if you lock things down like a government agency with high tech surveillance and alarms, your roommate will leave the door open one day and then it all is for naught.
Renters insurance will cost you for the year far less than a single piece of security equipment, probably about the same as a cheapass webcam which would probably get stolen too if it ever comes to that. Back up the critical data to cd and leave it with a friend in another room from time to time, and password protect your laptop in hopes that whoever steals it won't be able to hack in. Beyond that its just not worth the headache to try to keep an eye on everything, its just equipment that you can buy again down at Best Buy with the insurance check should somebody ever get to it. Besides that, the best security system on the planet won't help you if somebody steals your bike from the rack in front of a lecture hall, or snags your iPod in the cafeteria while you're not looking. Insurance will cover all of this and you don't have to worry about making sure its working every time you leave the room.
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Ok first the disclaimer, I do work for eBay though I have no specific or internal knowledge of this particular case.
The part of the article here that caught my eye was "One forum thread from Friday pointed to a California-based seller known as sdc_prod_434012 with no previous eBay transactions whose new listings did not allow users to actually bid on his items."
Like I said I don't have any specific knowledge of this user or case but lets consider the facts and possibilities here. Its a user with 0 feedback, who has apparently never bought or sold a single item on eBay, despite being registered on the site for almost a year now. Then one morning he suddenly wakes up and in a brilliant display of speed and efficiency posts 35000 items for sale at once. Now then, is it more likely that this is:
a) An ambitious new user who was waiting for just the right moment to post his entire inventory for sale.
b) A scammer who is trying to get as many quick fraudulent buy-it-now transactions as he can before being noticed by the security filters.
I'd be willing to bet the correct answer is b, and that the anti-fraud programs correctly detected this user and disabled his items before people were able to bid on them. If this was a legitimate user then its unfortunate and I'm sure that customer service is apologizing profusely, but in 99 out of 100 cases like this its just your garden variety scammer and the fraud detection programs at eBay worked exactly as they were supposed to.
Registering random domain names won't accomplish anything, nor will registering variants of nsi-sucks.com. Nobody cares.
However, if you were to search for some radical political domain names, something insulting of current political figures or supportive of all the various groups and countries that we like to call enemies these days. Then send links to various news organizations showing that these radical domain names are all owned by NSI. Bill O'Reilley and Rush would have a ball with this.
How about a whole battery of pro-abortion domains, and then send the whois screenshots to various vocal church groups? "See? All owned by Network Solutions!"
How about some nasty racist domains and then send the whois info to the NAACP and such. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are always looking for their next photo op and sound bite.
You get the idea.
Enjoy!
This is very simple actually: Get renters' insurance and stop worrying about all the rest of it. Bottom line is that there's just no way to ensure in a dorm environment that everything is safe. Even if you lock things down like a government agency with high tech surveillance and alarms, your roommate will leave the door open one day and then it all is for naught.
Renters insurance will cost you for the year far less than a single piece of security equipment, probably about the same as a cheapass webcam which would probably get stolen too if it ever comes to that. Back up the critical data to cd and leave it with a friend in another room from time to time, and password protect your laptop in hopes that whoever steals it won't be able to hack in. Beyond that its just not worth the headache to try to keep an eye on everything, its just equipment that you can buy again down at Best Buy with the insurance check should somebody ever get to it. Besides that, the best security system on the planet won't help you if somebody steals your bike from the rack in front of a lecture hall, or snags your iPod in the cafeteria while you're not looking. Insurance will cover all of this and you don't have to worry about making sure its working every time you leave the room.
Get some insurance, and get some sleep.