I LOVE/HATE EBAY. AM I REALLY AN A$$HOLE, ANY THOUGHTS

[Ghoste]

I don't want to drag this off topic, but what would you consider a weak password?

Type yours out, and we will let you know.

Should I?   

[xs29j8Bullitt]

I don't want to drag this off topic, but what would you consider a weak password?

A weak password word would be a name or normal word... like BILL, RACER, MAGNUM, etc

Try... B4I2L6L, IMARCR, MAAGNM... better yet, if you can remember it, alphabet soup... R2zW45AqZ

XS

[Troy]

I don't want to drag this off topic, but what would you consider a weak password?

Logical sequences, common words, "password", blank, all letters, all numbers, the same as the user name, birthdays or any other date, etc.

Here's some tips:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/privacy/password.mspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength

Troy

[Troy]

On the subject of spammers/scammers and IP addresses, I had one today that changed IP addresses four times within a few minutes and two of the addresses were not even real (globally reserved address space). I gotta figure out how they did that! One was a Comcast address which would have been an infected computer and the last was an email server. Any way, in my attempt to catch it I accidently banned a whole bunch of real members from the site (even for only a few minutes). This was *one* spammer and wasted 30 minutes of my time and caused all sorts of headaches. Imagine eBay with millions of legitimate users per day and the target of a lot more people trying to cause them problems. While I was researching the attck I ran across some guys trying to investigate a mysterious program on their server that continously hit the eBay "search" page with the same query. I imagine that when it got a "hit" it would notify a central program with all of the details so another automated program could do whatever annoying thing that it does.

Troy

[xs29j8Bullitt]

I am a Mod on one of the "new" Challenger forums which receives very few visitors compared to this site.  Still, there has been a very noticeable increase in Spammer attacks lately.  I average about 3 spammer bannings a day, even after new anti-spammer measures were recently put into effect.  The Admin & other Mod make "kills" as well...

So far I haven't seen the auto-posting of generic first posts like I have seen here, but I am sure I will eventually.  One of the measures taken was to restrict URL postings until 5 posts had been made by the new member...   within a week a spammer got around the restriction somehow!  I believe the site Admin is still trying to figure out how he did it.

Good Luck in the Spammer Wars!

Allen

[is_it_EVER_done?]

TROY: I couldn't agree more with your input, but the one thing you are overlooking/not addressing, is that E-bay does not address the majority of the complaints that are contained in this post due to the fact that to do so, would introduce a level of legal implication that they have been able to avoid by claiming that they are only an "item listing" venue with no obligation as to content.

If this was indeed the case, all the spam, hassles, etc., would be just a fact of doing business, but the reality is that they CAN, AND DO, block every listing - e-mail - message - question - item - etc. that is not politically correct, illegal, or crosses over whatever line they "draw in the sand".

EVERY listing is examined for content in order to eliminate Nazi/racist items/descriptions, guns, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, even refrigerant. Plus thousands of other P.C., or illegal items, questions, or descriptions.

This proves that they are playing "both sides of the fence" by being able to claim that they can not police everything, and so can't be responsible for the site, while actually "policing" everything even beyond legal requirements, as evidenced by there ability to check every word that they display, and eliminating those they don't like!

I'm sure it's difficult to police everything, but they prove it can - and is - done on a continuous basis,.

[Troy]

You'll catch the automated ones like that - the "human" ones will find a way around it. The spammers rank sites based on traffic. Higher traffic means it's more likely their links will be indexed by the search engines. I didn't want to negatively affect any real users by adding a bunch of rules so I made more work for myself. There's one trick I've been saving but my internet access at home is spotty and I want to be sure I can disable it in case I screw up...

Troy