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Bidders on e-bay

Sometimes the sellers have decided to keep the bidders identities secret. This is supposedly to protect their identities and to keep from getting false second chance emails from unscrupulous individuals.

Sue
 
Fighting Scams & Spams & Spoofs & Phishes The eBay Way.

Medcinmn said:
Why do I see so many bidders with names like j***9, and y***4 etc? Just curious.
Click to expand...
Those are disguises that eBay applies to people's real eBay user names as a way of discouraging all-round eBay-related bogusness.

Originally, bidders' identities were out there in the open for everybody to look at. That not only facilitated various kinds of spam, it also simplified scams & spoofs & phishes of various kinds.

The illicit shenanigans got so bad -- e.g., I received lots & lots & lots of so-called eBay "2nd chance offers" but they were all bogus without exception -- that eBay recognized that it had to do something.

By the time eBay got round to disguising bidders' identities the way it does now, the institution of eBay was firmly established & accepted as a piece of worldwide Internet commercial culture. The current system is described by eBay as an attempt to balance openness & transparency of the bidding process on the 1 hand against privacy preservation & scam prevention on the other hand.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 
eBay Oddness Having Nothing Whatever To Do With Scams & Rip-Offs.

Click here for details of my most recent eBay adventure -- the oddest yet that I've been involved in.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
If I remember correctly the idenity of those bidders is only concealed until the end of the auction.

Alan you are histerical. I love your stories and insight.

Paul:whoopie:
 
As a seller, one has the choice to keep the bidder's ID's private. This is done in higher price auctions sometimes. The letters are scrambled too because once I won a private auction and the first initial was not my user ID initial, even though I won! LOL.

Katherine
 
eBay Sellers See Stuff The Non-Sellers Don't See.

pambroselli86 said:
If I remember correctly the idenity of those bidders is only concealed until the end of the auction.
Click to expand...
Thanks to the miracle of web-browser "cookies," eBay's electric computers can tell who's looking at a particular eBay web page. If it's the seller of an item, bits of information like bidder identities, payment status of completed auctions, etc., are visible that the rest of us can't see when we're viewing the very same page.

One way to see the difference is to log in & look at an eBay page for an item you're selling via 1 web browser (e.g., FireFox) & then use a different browser (e.g. InterNet Explorer) to look at the same eBay page without logging in.
pambroselli86 said:
Alan you are histerical. I love your stories and insight.
Click to expand...
Thanks.

I try to have a good time with TUG-BBS, & it's nice to know that other people (some of'm) share in the fun. (Not everybody likes my TUG-BBS entries. Some people got seriously grumped off by a few of my recent contributions. So it goes.)

Meanwhile, my son showed me tonight a new Web Log ("Blog") he set up in my name, consisting of a bunch of my entries he gathered off TUG-BBS & collected together at the Mox Nix Blog. They come from January 2006 through September 2006, he said. Gluttons for punishment don't have to go searching through TUG-BBS to find my various on- & off-topic ruminations from back then. Now they can just go to the blog & take it from the top.

So far, recycled stuff from TUG-BBS is all that's on Mox Nix Blog. That could change once I get the hang of blogging at a site other than TUG-BBS -- we'll see.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 
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Es Macht Nichts

mjblow said:
I like the name of the blog you are launching. Is it a reference to a German phrase?
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It is an Americanized corruption of a German phrase that became G.I. slang following the occupation of Germany after WW2 & lingering on into the mid- or late-1960s or so -- basically meaning "never mind" or "it makes no difference" or "I don't care."

Funny thing is I hardly ever use the phrase conversationally even though I overuse it bigtime right here on TUG-BBS. And I was only in the army 3 years & was never stationed anywhere near Germany.

Go figure.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 
Mox Nix comtinued to be a popular expression among the military and families stationed in Germany well into the '70s, too, at least on the bases where my husband was stationed. It brings back fun memories - and it certainly captured the essence of how we coped with some of our experiences! I suspect it may continue to be used there.

I've added your blog to my favorites and will read some of the stories I've missed on TUG when I need a good chuckle. I hope you'll consider adding to the blog on a regular basis.
 
Maybe After I Get The Hang Of It.

stmartinfan said:
I hope you'll consider adding to the blog on a regular basis.
Click to expand...
My son, who got me the domain name & set up Mox Nix Blog for me, added a bunch more entries -- all from the annals of TUG-BBS, with some of the TUG-BBS material entered as blog-entry "comments" when the originals were follow-ups from later on in the same TUG-BBS discussion topics.

I think he intends to keep going till all my TUG-BBS stuff is on the blog, then turn the controls over to me.

Meanwhile, I will keep chugging along as always, grossly misusing TUG-BBS for personal blog purposes -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- till I get the hang of the actual blog. Then we'll see what happens after that.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
Back to original topic...

Medcinmn said:
Why do I see so many bidders with names like j***9, and y***4 etc? Just curious.
Click to expand...


Since this hides the names from bidders doesn't it allow for the sellers to bid up the price easily? Maybe using another computer or another account?
 
Auctiva Looks Good -- Is It On The Level ? What's The Catch ?

I haven't figured out what the gimmick is with Auctiva -- seems to be a free service for dressing up the look of eBay auction offerings.

Is it really free ?

Does it stay free after some initial no-cost trial period ?

Any TUG folks experienced with Auctiva & willing to offer insights ?

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
eBay Sending Form 1099 To The I. R. S. ?

Someone we know who is making ends meet between jobs by selling stuff via Craig's List & eBay says that eBay now reports sales to the IRS.

Zat so ?

And if it's so, doesn't eBay have to send copies of the reporting forms to the sellers also, not just to the IRS ?

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
Doubting...

AwayWeGo said:
Someone we know who is making ends meet between jobs by selling stuff via Craig's List & eBay says that eBay now reports sales to the IRS.
Click to expand...

I don't buy or sell on eBay, personally, but I'd be very interested to hear about the factual basis upon which this person makes this particular claim.
Frankly, I tend to think it's likely nonsense and/or urban myth...
 
AwayWeGo said:
Click here for details of my most recent eBay adventure -- the oddest yet that I've been involved in.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
Click to expand...

Hilarious story - amazing that you got the 150 back!
 
eBay Horns Of Every Shape & Size.

Zac495 said:
Hilarious story - amazing that you got the 150 back!
Click to expand...
Not only that, as of yesterday I also have the horn back -- in 1 piece & all ready to go.

My local go-to guy for brass instrument repairs not only reassembled the wreckage, he also added silver USA "Mercury" dimes to the 1-2-3 valve levers & converted the fixed-bell horn to a screw-bell model using a screw-ring set I bought via eBay a few years ago & had been saving for the appropriate conversion candidate.

The Chief Of Staff is adapting a flat (i.e., made for screwbell horns) eBay carrying case to fit the newly customized horn. (The case was configured for a slightly smaller horn, so she's enlarging the place where the body of the horn fits. Despite their general similarity, horns are not all identical in configuration & dimensions. So it goes.)

Meanwhile, I already had too many horns around here -- 3 good ones I actually like to play, plus 1 oddball collector's item, plus some dogs & cats that I need to sell off, & now also this latest freshly customized eBay horn.

It would help if I'd quit looking at other people's horns on eBay, because of that ever-present risk of "accidentally" buying another 1.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​



 
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