You spot the same listing repeated after item had been sold. Opening the listing, you find a BIN option and email address, both outside of eBay. This cut & paste listing fraud is one we now spot frequently.

The bad guy hijacks a member's account...one who has many listings and doesn't check them all til the end of auction...or a member who only buys and never sells.

The Fraudster then posts a few bogus or up to hundreds of high ticket items he has lifted, (cut & pasted), from recently closed legitimate listings...and generally for 1 or 3 day auctions.

The clues to look for in this scam, is a Buy It Now offer AND an off eBay email address very prominently displayed. Sometimes, but not always, the bidders will be made private so they can't be alerted by other members to the scam.

Also, the hackers tend to use the same key search words. Therefore, very often you can do a, "completed auction" search using those words and find the original listings with the identical photos and descriptions.

The BEST advice we can offer so you don't get burned, is to:

1. Look at the seller's other listings and chances are, you'll find a whole bunch of different items...all with the same, off eBay BIN and email address.

2.  Do a completed auction search for the same item.

3.  If you do spot a scam listing, report it to eBay's Live Help chat. All the other options require email and that may or may not get read in time for eBay Security to pull the listings, (that's why the short auction times). Since those Reps at LH have direct contact with eBay Security, we use them exclusively for this purpose and all fraud listings were ended within the hour.

4.  Finally, to help prevent your account from being hijacked, thereby giving the hacker a place to operate, is to start using the eBay & PayPal Security Key. We've had ours for two months now and love it! This tiny device generates a different and random 6 digit number for you to add to your log-in info...and the numbers change each time you log on.

That's the secret how your acct. is protected with this Key. For instance, say you fall victim to one of those bogus emails that takes you to a fake eBay site and requires you to log in. And now, you have inadvertently given up your user name and password to a hacker-in-waiting.

However, if you use this Security Key and yes...the bad guy will have your user name and PW, BUT when he tries to use that info which also includes those additional 6 numbers you've entered, he cannot gain access to your acct., because that number cannot be used twice...and only YOU have that number generating key.

Hope this info was of help...if you'd like to see some saved screen shots of actual hijacked listings, feel free to contact us through the eBay member mail system.

Have fun with happy and safe bidding, Lisa, Graham and the rest of the Toy Boat Shop crew