Banner Sponsors
For artists and collectors sponsored by Intercal...your mohair supplier and Johnna's Mohair Store
Posts: 280I've been watching some items on e-Bay and noticed that some of the bidder ids were something like e***f. The more items I looked at, the more I noticed that the bidders all had exactly the same style user id. Always a letter, then 3 asterisks followed by another letter. The weird part is, if you looked at all of the bidders on a particular item, every single one of them had the same style user id. None of them were anything different like bearbabe02 or iluvbears, etc. (These are just made up names - hopefully not real.) This same id pattern was showing up on just about everything I looked at, and almost without exception, all of the bidders were different.
Is it just a coincidence that hundreds of bidders have this type of id or is this a new sort of scam that is startng?
Luann
Donna's Duin BruinsThese are private auctions. They do that to keep the bidder id unknown.
Donna
Luann, when I first saw this awhile back I was so confused. Then I learned that Ebay now scrambles the user names this way to make it more anonymous. I think this replaced the bidder1, bidder2, bidder3 etc. The seller can see the full user name , but no one else can. The winning bidders full user name does get revealed too.
Mystery solved :thumbsup:
edited: Donna, the user names still show this way even if it isn't a private auction. I guess it applies to all auctions now.
Posts: 280Thanks for the info. I thought the identity of the bidders was only hidden on items over a certain dollar amount. None of the stuff I was looking at was even remotely high dollar. One item started at $39 and every single bid showed a bidder id like I was describing, except for the last one, who was the winner.
Just seems a bit strange to hid the identity of the bidders until after the auction is over, and then see the real identity of the winner. Ah, the electronic world!
Luann
Bears by EdieLuann, ebay was just doing this once the auction reached over the $200 mark but now they are apparently doing it on all the auctions right from the starting bid. There has been a bit of discussion about it here on ebay on some other threads with some of the pros and cons about the idea - not that we have any choice in the matter! 
Newcastle, OntarioHi Luann,
Yes, it's another one of Ebay's changes - all auction will now show only this system of hiding the bidders, no matter what the price range. It just wasn't as well publicised as the other changes that are coming.
hugs,
Brenda
Back Road BearsHubs and a couple of other guys get into bidding wars with eachother on certain items of interest to them (car stuff 
) and I KNOW they end up paying rediculous amount for some of this stuff beause they get into with eachother. Guess that won't be happening any more! Hey, we might actually be able to starting a savings account now! (Just kidding - it wasn't quite that bad!)
