eBay Auctions and You
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/scam-goes-after-ebay-users/
As many of you are probably aware, eBay is a website where anybody can create an account and bid on items to buy, or post their own items to sell. Since many users link their Paypal accounts with eBay so that paying for items is easy, eBay accounts have been the target of hackers who try to obtain login data to access the linked Paypal accounts. Additionally, these accounts can then be phished for more sensitive data or passwords to other online accounts. Fortunately, as long as the user is paying close attention they can avoid becoming the target of such attacks since the scam will attempt to redirect the user to another website where they ask for your eBay login information.
Regardless of the dangers of these phishing attempts, eBay can be a very useful place for commerce. eBay auctions are set up so that the bidders pay the price they bid, so it is an ascending first price auction. However, the rules slightly change if you use eBay’s auto bidding mechanism. eBay allows you to set a maximum bid that you are willing to pay for the item, and if somebody outbids you then eBay will automatically place a slightly higher bid for you so that you do not have to sit in front of the computer all day. The minimum increment the auction increases by depends on the current bid of the item, but most of the time it is either $0.50 or $1.00. Similar to the ascending second price auction covered in class, the best strategy to use when bidding on eBay using the autobidding function is to bid your true value. This means that if you are bidding on an item that you are willing to pay $30 dollars for, then place a maximum bid of $30.00 and let eBay do the work for you. If someone outbids you, then you do not lose anything from bidding. If nobody bids as high as $30, then you win the item satisfactorily. More often than not, somebody may not even bid it up to $30, and you may be able to walk away with your item for a lesser price, yielding you a net gain on that transaction. Just remember, your best strategy is to always bid at your true value; do not fall victim to auction fever!