This hasn’t been making the headlines lately – but did you know that a gang of 24 Romanian nationals has been arrested last week as prime suspects in a huge eBay fraud scheme? This time they managed to snatch a few millions from eBay shoppers’ credit cards before getting busted!

The Romanians are becoming notorious when it comes to online phishing and hacking. Low wages, low employment and high computer skills – these are the combined factors why Eastern Europe and Romania especially have become so active in eBay fraud cases.

Let’s remember how the cybercriminal Vladuz was arrested back in April this year for penetrating eBay’s secure servers. But this time Vladuz’s eBay fraud plot looks like school-boy’s attempts if compared to the new large scale fraud on eBay carried out by his fellow nationals.

So how did they do it? And what you, eBay sellers and shoppers have to be aware of in the future when pulling out your credit cards?

Well, their scheme was sophisticated and quite simple at the same time. They placed fake listings on eBay and other online auction websites. Those listings included links to websites hosted outside the auctions. Can you see the simple opportunity that opens up now for such fraudsters? Yes, you simply re-direct eBay shoppers to phishing websites where you collect their credit card information. And they never see the website again!

So we can assume that eBay fraud victims were offered to purchase the goods on those websites outside the auctions and they had no way of knowing that their money would be stolen.

But does eBay allow linking from the listings to outside websites? Well, actually it does! Although you can’t simply link to any website you want, this little loophole was just enough for the fraudsters to take the advantage. As the eBay linking policy states, eBay sellers may link from auction listings to a website whose primary purpose is to further describe the item sold on the listing.

Of course, eBay sellers can’t just link to their own shopping carts – the listings would be cancelled soon enough and the account suspended. And it can be actually argued if the listings with innocent links to descriptive webpages would be kept. eBay is famous of being very strict and sellers can’t prove the opposite when it comes to questionable eBay decisions.

But for the Romanian cybercriminal gang it was just enough to perpetrate the eBay fraud crime and get a number of people to visit their phishing websites. eBay can’t physically check every single listing created on their auction website. The only thing they could do is – forbid the linking completely…Can you, dear eBay sellers understand what it would mean for you?

It would mean you wouldn’t be able to generate ANY traffic to your websites using the few chances you have – from eBay About Me page, for instance. This means that fraud on eBay can directly affect also sellers, not only buyers!

Buyers have to be very wary not to leave the credit card details on some suspicious website. Sellers have to transfer more and more of their business activities to their own websites and focus on getting search engine traffic. What if one day eBay, forced by authorities, forbids even mentioning your company’s website on your eBay store?