I find this hard to believe #2

[Bushhippi]

Pssst....only one explanation..it's "THE MAN" doing this. At great risk to myself I found where this insane bidding was coming from..
With unlimited funds and people, we are doomed.

Yeah.....Yeah.....it's the man he knows what were looking it. I hate that, just like 22 cal. rounds pretty soon they well be all gone.

 

[Maxime D.]

Pssst....only one explanation..it's "THE MAN" doing this. At great risk to myself I found where this insane bidding was coming from..
With unlimited funds and people, we are doomed.

''THE ORGANISATION'' nobody knows who they are but they have infiltrated the system to the highest ranking. I believe they are located in......Error Message: Connection lost

 

[mmbcastle]

In a purely legal sense, it's difficult to attach a name to an IP address, especially if you need to convince a jury. The RIAA basically gave up on trying to identify Internet users by their IP addresses.... Even doing that, IP addresses are assigned to users using DHCP from a common address block. If I look at my server logs and see a request coming from 50.140.101.47, then a few minutes later, another request for the same product comes from 50.140.16.96, some automated software could guess that it's likely to be coming from the same person....... Advertisers do this all the time in every corner of the internet. There are algorithms running on most major webservers that are always trying to identify unique individual people. You would be utterly shocked at the accuracy with which they can identify you, even if you do clear your cookies, reboot your modem, or even log in from a friend's house.

Just to amplify the technical aspects of this slightly. There are advertising algorithms out there to track you by IP, and tie that to any usernames, etc you do provide. There are several companies out there now that put out cookies that aren't just used by the site you're on, they're shared by other sites you visit too, building a profile. "Private" browsing software and anti-spyware software can help this, but only so much.

On cable modems, it MAY reset your IP if you reset your modem, or it may not. In some systems it's easier to give you a more persistent address.

Of course, I know people that have both cable modems and DSL in their place. They do it so they can operate multiple Amazon accounts. They DO watch for different seller IDs using the same IP address.

I have both in my business, because customers have to be able to reach my FTP servers whether the DSL (primary) or cable modem (secondary) is down.

All that said, the cost of prosecution is very likely to prevent ebay from worrying too much about low order shill bidding. If they got too many complaints about a particular seller, and it was blatant and easy to prove, they might do something.