Ebay

[Morrisonker]

Is it possible to hack into the Ebay thingy and give yourself positive feedback without buying or selling anything?  I've sold an item to a buyer and I checked out their profile and found this :-http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback MemberLeft&memberid=gilly_goth&items=-1&item =5429066649&de=off Incase that didn't work, basically she has page upon page of exactly the same comments from different buyers and sellers.  They've all been posted within minutes of each other and I swear, she has about 3 stock comments and they keep being repeated.  Should I report her or is this something usual that I haven't noticed before?

[squiggle]

This is the feedback she has left for others, not that she has received.

It looks like she just leaves feedback for all her sellers in batches, rather than going through each individual transaction, and having to think up something original for each one. That would explain why all the feedback has been left within minutes of eachother.

Feedback received looks pretty normal, or am I missing something?

[Zen]

http://humor.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&am p;sdn=humor&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi2.ebay.com%2Faw-cgi%2 FeBayISAPI.dll%3FViewFeedbackMemberLeft%26amp%3BmemberId %3Dandy46477

Great feedback here.

[squiggle]

Love that link Zen!

Shame he's now Naru.

[Morrisonker]

*hangs head* ok, i'm stupid, didn't look at the thingy properly.  But even so, is it possible?

[Buenchico]

e-bay take great trouble to ensure that their system can't be 'hacked' in the way you describe. What is harder to prevent, however, is someone creating multiple identities and 'selling' items to himself. (Yes, there are some safeguards against multiple identities but they're not foolproof. Even if they were, a group a friends could use their genuinely different identities to allegedly buy and sell goods to and from each other to create lots of positive feedback). So, take care, but don't assume that everone out there is 'on the fiddle'. (My feedback score is 100% and it's all genuine - honest!).

Chris

[Ralph]

There's also quite a good trade in Gmail invites, Trabant audio files, recipes for cookies, desktop wallpaper jpegs and other virtually worthless items. You can buy these things for a few cents and then the "seller" leaves you positive feedback for the transaction. If the seller sells several tens of thousands of these items, they're in the money. A con-artist buys them to build a 20 or 30 item positive feedback rating then offers brand new ipods (or similar) at very low prices. A victim comes along and sees the deal of the century from someone who has a big and all positive feedback rating and bids �40. They win the auction and their �40, along with ten other peoples' �40, heads off to Shanghai never to be seen again.

If possible, check what the person bought or sold to get their rating.