The Stop Online Piracy Act in the US is getting ever more publicity with GoDaddy one of the high profile companies to suffer from supporting it as we wrote a couple of days ago.  In our previous article Martin summed up SOPA very effectively.

If you are living in the United States, you should have heard about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and Protect-IP, which, when passed, would give companies rights that they should not have. If it passes, IP rightsholders (a term vaguely defined) could send notices to payment processors or ad services like Google Adsense to force them to stop doing business with listed websites, all without legal process.

Site owners have five days to file a counter-notice, but neither payment processors or ad networks have any obligation to respect it. Even worse, they are granted “immunity for choking off a site if they have a “reasonable belief” that some portion of the site enables infringement”.

Now a loose confederation of Internet giants are considering shutting down the entire websites for 24 hours and instead showing a messagew urging their visitors and customers to contact their representative in the US congress the day before the vote goes to the house there.

The coalition is made up of some very big names on the Internet including Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, eBay, PayPal, AOL, Foursquare, IAC, LinkedIn, Mozilla, OpenDNS and Zynga.  If the plan goes ahead all these services could be taken offline for 24 hours.

In a report by CNet…

When the home pages of Google.com, Amazon.com, Facebook.com, and their Internet allies simultaneously turn black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians about a vote in the U.S. Congress the next day on SOPA, you’ll know they’re finally serious.

True, it would be the political equivalent of a nuclear option–possibly drawing retributions from the the influential politicos backing SOPA and Protect IP–but one that could nevertheless be launched in 2012.

“There have been some serious discussions about that,” says Markham Erickson, who heads the NetCoalition trade association that counts Google, Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo as members. “It has never happened before.”

This wouldn’t be the first piece of anti-piracy legislation around the world to face stiff opposition.  France have already passed an Internet copyright law but the Digital Economy Act in the UK stalled in the face of arguments from major Internet Service Providers British Telecom and TalkTalk.

Many reports say that SOPA is still set to pass the US congress and that very few Americans have heard about it.  Shutting down services such as Facebook and Google, and replacing them with anti-SOPA messages for a day would certainly raise awareness, but a question mark remains over whether doing so only one day before the congress vote would be effective enough.

This is the first time ever that major websites have threatened to effectively go on strike to boycott something, and it is completely unprecedented.  It is unclear at this time whether the services would be taken down worldwide or just in the US and also how serious the coalition are about the boycott, which would inevitably lose them all a day’s trade.

Services are commonly targeted for IP addresses anyway and it wouldn’t be difficult for these companies to target messages to their US-based users.  With many millions of visitors every day in the US, companies such as Google and Facebook could achieve this on their own.  Imagine then how much more leverage they would have with Amazon, Yahoo! and others on board.  If this goes ahead it is still possible that other companies could follow suit, effectively crippling the Internet in the US for the day before the vote.

So what do you think of SOPA and your favourite websites being taken offline for a day?

The browser userscript Add Enlarge Picture Option to eBay Search Results (what a name) adds a semi-automatic option to all eBay search and category pages to display a larger version of the thumbnail image that is shown next to each item in those listings.

The developer has configured the userscript to only work on eBay.com and eBay.co.uk. Users who want to use the script on other eBay sites can try to add those urls to the script. I have not tested this though and it is questionable if it is going to work.

It should be noted that the script works on most eBay category pages. Those that use a custom layout, like the Women’s Clothing category, are not supported.

The script displays an enlarge link next to each thumbnail image on eBay. Moving the mouse cursor over the link text will automatically display the larger version – if available – as an overlay image on the screen. The image vanishes automatically when the mouse cursor leaves the link area.

Users of the script can click on the top right corner of each listing to open the program options. Here they can modify the image preview option to activate by click and not by mouse over. They can furthermore add enlarge links to the private My eBay listing and check for script updates manually from there.

I have tested the userscript both in the Firefox and the Google Chrome web browser and it turned out that the script is compatible with both Internet browsers. Google Chrome users can simply install the userscript from the project website over at userscripts.org just like they would with any other extensions for the browser. Firefox users need to install the Greasemonkey or Scriptish add-on first before they can install and use that userscript.

The core problem with the default feedback display is that it is not possible to only display negative feedback. This is not a problem if a seller has only completed a few auctions in the past, but auction feedback from sellers with hundreds or thousands of auctions are divided on many pages. It is time consuming to browse through all the pages to find the negative feedback.

The Firefox extension Ebay Negs optimizes the process by generating summary pages that list all negative feedback of a seller.

The Firefox extension adds two context menu entries to the browser that can be used to display the negative feedback summary. These entries are displayed on all pages, not only on eBay domains with the intention to provide look-ups of eBay sellers on non-eBay pages as well.

A right-click on an eBay profile page or an auction, and the selection of Open eBay Negs from the context menu loads the negative feedback summary on the same page or another tab. Other options available include highlighting a profile name before right-clicking. The page that opens lists all negative and neutral comments that the selected seller has received in the past 12 months.

The extension uses the look-up script offered by Toolhaus. Users who do not want to install the extension and users who do not use Firefox can open the website directly to look-up eBay seller feedback. The add-on basically makes the process more comfortable, which is especially handy for users who regularly buy on eBay and check the sellers before they do.

The summary page lists the feedback score and other information about the seller, plus all negative comments. It is possible to only display negative comments that have been added in the last 30 days.

Ebay Negs is an add-on for the Firefox web browser that is best suited for heavy eBay buyers who do seller background checks before they buy. Everyone else may be better of bookmarking the Toolhaus page to enter seller names manually whenever they want to make a purchase on eBay

One interesting aspect of the chart is that Chase Bank and ebay battled it out for most of the year and that PayPal began its rise in December which Avira attributes to the Christmas season and the increased usage of PayPal in that season.

Several other brands experienced a lot of phishing attacks as well. Here is the top 10 list according to Avira:

• PayPal 32205 threats
• Chase Bank 25901 threats
• eBay 18738
• American Express 5202 threats
• Bank of America 4540 threats
• Abbey Bank 3978 threats
• IRS 3712 threats
• HSBC Bank 2762 threats
• Citibank 2265
• Facebook 2217

All of the brands in the top 10 with the exception of Facebook are brands related to the finance sector or shopping. It certainly is an interesting trend that the attackers were able to produce that many phishing websites in December alone to make PayPal rise to the top of the statistics.

The statistics collected by other companies will probably differ marginally but it is likely that the top brands listed in the Avira list are also the top brands in their listings. PayPal users should be very cautious at the moment.

A new widget has been recently added to Gmail labs that increases email security by offering phishing protection for the two services PayPal and eBay. Emails send by these two services are authenticated by the widget and an authentication icon is displayed in the Gmail interface so that the user can see at first glance that the emails are coming from the original source.

The main advantage of this added layer of phishing protection is that emails that claim to be from either PayPal or eBay but are not will now be deleted before they reach the user’s email account meaning that they will not appear in the spam folder either. Google is hoping to add additional services in the future to increase the reach of the additional email security layer.

Users can add the new phishing protection by logging into their Gmail account, clicking on the Settings link in the top right corner, switching to the Labs tab and enabling the Authentication icon for verified senders widget.

According to a newsletter sent by eBay to its members, eBay will allow sellers to list their first five items each month without having to pay a listing fee. In the past, eBay has offered large discounts to bulk sellers on eBay leaving the burden of cost on the shoulders of those who list only a few items at a time. Former users have said, “because of this, what used to feel like an online garage sale where some treasures can be found has turned into just another online store.”

With the new fee structure, eBay hopes to turn around sales on the site. The change allows sellers to list items without paying a listing fee for the first five items listed a month. This is aimed at bringing in new sellers and bringing back many of the sellers who have left eBay because of rate increases. In lieu of the listing fees for the first five items, eBay charges a flat 8.75% commission known on eBay as the final value fee. Those familiar with selling on eBay are probably aware of the final value fee as it is charged on all sales. Because of the flat rate final value fee offered with the first five items sold each month, sellers could end up paying more in fees by using the “first five items listed are free deal” than the traditional fee structure. When a seller surpasses the first five items listed per month, they will be subject to the insertion fees, but will benefit from the tiered final value fee system.

The reaction of the eBay community is mixed with many sellers stating that the final value fee system that goes along with the free insertion fees is “a hidden way to get more money” and “more punishment for the little guy.” Following the announcement on June 16th, eBay’s stock fell 1% closing at $17.23 per share. eBay stock hit its lowest point since 2001 earlier this year, closing at $10.43 per share on March 6th. The fee change has left many to wonder, will the free listings bring eBay out of its slump or will the change in the final value fee structure drive the auction giant further into the ground?

My eBay exporter is a portable software program for eBay businesses and individuals who want to save their eBay auction data locally. The software supports 16 ebay stores including those located in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom and Canada. The user needs to supply the eBay username, password and store for the application to be able to retrieve the data from eBay. Data can be exported as a csv or Microsoft Excel file. Information saved from the buying list are won and lost auctions as well as auctions the user is watching or bidding on. The selling list contains sold and unsold auctions, current active auctions and scheduled auctions.

It should be noted that this application is also only capable of retrieving up to 60 days of data which would mean that a user would need to run the software every 60 days to retrieve continuous data. The exported files would also have to be joined later on as there does not seem to be a way to do that automatically.

Auctions can be monitored on the eBay website easily with the disadvantage that changes are only reported to the user per email sporadically or after logging into the ebay site. Software programs that monitor eBay auctions offer the advantage that the information are available in realtime on the computer desktop without having to access the eBay website.

This gives a user more control over auctions and the bidding process. JBidWatcher was recently mentioned in Joe’s post about winning more eBay auctions. The program is available for multiple operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Mac. Windows users can download a portable version or an installer.

The eBay software can be linked to an eBay account. This is not necessary for users who only want to monitor eBay auctions but becomes important for the sniping module. Sniping refers to late bidding on eBay auctions which computers can do way better and more precisely than humans.

Auctions can be added by adding their auction number in the program. Another, comfortable, option is to perform searches on the selected eBay site which will add items to the eBay item list automatically. A search for Google Phone or iPhone will for example add auctions of that kind to the items list.

Items can then be sorted by time, price, time left, seller or name. Hovering the mouse over an item will display an auction image of one is existing. The eBay monitor provides access to RSS feeds which come in handy in certain situations to check eBay auctions from smartphones or other mobile devices or to process the items further.

The settings of the software program are quite extensive and include options to enter eBay username and password, to switch to a locale eBay website, set the sniping time in seconds or to specify the web browser that should be used to open the items on eBay. The only thing that seems to be missing is a statistic function that can be used to monitor item prices over time.

Sniping is a practice that has been used for years and years. Originally this was a manual process, where users made a bid in the closing seconds of an auction. This naturally could prove risky, as internet connections can fail and bids can’t go through. Automated services also exist which are often more reliable but can prove insecure and often charge a small fee. A few years back, I used Hammersnipe which offers free sniping and I didn’t have a bad experience, although neither I or gHacks are providing a recommendation as I suggest doing a lot of research in any sniping service before you use them. This is seen as controversial, though.

One of my favourite tactics is to bid completely random amounts. Instead of 14.00GBP, I bid 14.01GBP. This is because that way, if someone had bid 14.00GBP, my bid would be counted as the maximum bid instead of theirs, event though it is only a penny higher. As many eBayers use this tactic, it may help to use more random numbers than 0.01GBP, such as 0.44GBP.

Incremental bidding, where you bid up 1GBP or a similar amount every time you’re outbid is pretty useless. You’re much better off making your maximum bid the most you’re willing to pay; eBay will automatically outbid anyone who makes a smaller bid. eBay will only outbid them by the minimum increment, so you won’t end up out of pocket

On another note, it is really worth using eBay’s best offer system. I have used this to purchase cheap mass produced foreign electronics sold in massive quantities on eBay. I managed to save 0.50GBP through making an offer on a piece of hardware which had a buy it now price of 10GBP. Not much, but a difference nonetheless.

Whilst I have given this advice with sterling, one can obviously do the same in any currency.

The figure means that 66 used hard drives out of 100 sold would contain data data about the previous owner. Half of that number would still mean that every third used hard drive sold would contain personal data. The figures seem to grow worth instead of better with every passing year. Researchers seem to concentrate on hard drives but digital cameras or mobile phones might reveal the same amount of information including personal pictures, documents, contacts and even credit card or bank account information.

How can users protect themselves and their data? The easiest way would be to stop selling used hardware that contained data at one point. That solution is not always practicable though.

The user should make sure to make the data on the storage device unrecoverable. One of the best tools for that purpose is Eraser which can be used to clear the free disk space so that the files “underneath” cannot be recovered with file recovery software anymore.

Any tips that you might want to add? Let me know.

Skype messages were in the focus of privacy groups since first news about text filtering messages in China became known to the public. Back then Skype released an official statement that the text filter applied by the Chinese Skype partner Tom Online would not affect security and encryption mechanisms of Skype, that people’s privacy would not be compromised and calls, chats and other forms of communication on Skype would continue to be encrypted and secure.

Researchers and privacy activists of the University of Toronto discovered files on unprotected Chinese computers that contained filtered Skype messages that were recorded in China.

The filtering system uses a blacklist that contains words that will not be shown in Skype conversations. If a blacklisted word is send over Skype the word will be filtered and the conversation recorded including personal information about the users taking part in the chat.

Some of the words that cause the filtering and recording are Tibet, Taiwan Independence and Voice of America. There is no way of telling if and how Skype is working with authorities in other countries but who would want to risk that?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has Skype replacements on their priority list with links to multiple voip clients that can be downloaded freely.

The complete report from the researchers can be downloaded at the Infowar Monitor website. The major findings list:

• The full text chat messages of TOM-Skype users, along with Skype users who have
  communicated with TOM-Skype users, are regularly scanned for sensitive keywords, and
  if present, the resulting data are uploaded and stored on servers in China.
• These text messages, along with millions of records containing personal information, are
  stored on insecure publicly-accessible web servers together with the encryption key required to
  decrypt the data.
• The captured messages contain specifc keywords relating to sensitive political topics such
  as Taiwan independence, the Falun Gong, and political opposition to the Communist Party
  of China.
• Our analysis suggests that the surveillance is not solely keyword-driven. Many of the
  captured messages contain words that are too common for extensive logging, suggesting
  that there may be criteria, such as specifc usernames, that determine whether messages are
  captured by the system.

James Bond on the other hand would be ashamed of the most recent incident. A 28-year old delivery men thought that he made the bargain of his life by purchasing a Nikon Coolpix camera for roughly $30 on eBay.

Imagine his surprised look when he found out that the camera was filled to the brim with top secret information from Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. According to Techcrunch the camera was filled with information about “al-Qaeda cells, names, images of suspected terrorists and weapons, fingerprint information, and log-in details for the Secret Service’s computer network, containing a “Top Secret” marking”.

This incident leads to two conclusions: Even if politicians claim that there will be no data privacy leaks they can and will happen. The second is that it will happen again. One only wonders how many hard drives and other storage devices have been sold with sensitive information on them.

Heise was not able to get a statement from eBay about the allegations other than they would not comment on media speculations. The Austrian broadcaster ORF (German article) published an article last week that already contained the allegations that the Austrian police was able to listen to Skype conversations. The possibility to listen to Skype conversations was not trivial but doable.

The VeriSign Identity Protection device can be used to add another layer of security to the login process. The PayPal Security Key mentions only eBay and PayPal and I’m not sure if it works with the other websites and services that the VeriSign Identity Protection key works with.

The key is a little device that displays a six digit security code when a button is pressed. That code is active for 30 seconds after which it disappears again. The device has to be activated on the website that you want to use it for by entering the serial number of the device and two six digit codes.

Once a device has been linked to an account it has to be used to log into the account by pressing the button and entering the six digit code after the password on that website or by entering the login credentials normally and the six digit code on the next page where it is requested before the user can proceed.

The real benefit of this key is obviously that an attacker who is getting hold of your login credentials cannot login into the account if he does not have access to the active six digit code.

PayPal seems to heavily subsidize the key. If you order the security key at PayPal you receive a blueish-gray device for roughly 5€ while the VeriSign key is delivered in dark red for the price of $30. As I said I’m not sure if the PayPal key works with other services as well.

The VeriSign website offers two additional devices. One is the so called VIP Security Card (for $48), a credit-card sized device that seems to offer the same functionality and the SanDisk U3 TrustedSignins
which works with SanDisk U3 devices but does not seem to come with additional charges.

This is definitely a step into the right direction and I strongly suggest to everyone using eBay and PayPal regularly to get one of those security devices to add another layer of protection to their account.

PayPal and eBay finally made the decision to sign all emails originating from their servers including the international versions which means that it is possible to eliminate PayPal and eBay phishing emails before they even reach the inbox or spam folder. The system was tested for a few weeks silently and only a few users did notice according to the official Gmail blog.

Now any email that claims to come from “paypal.com” or “ebay.com” (and their international versions) is authenticated by Gmail and — here comes the important part — rejected if it fails to verify as actually coming from PayPal or eBay. That’s right: you won’t even see the phishing message in your spam folder. Gmail just won’t accept it at all. Conversely, if you get an message in Gmail where the “From” says “@paypal.com” or “@ebay.com,” then you’ll know it actually came from PayPal or eBay. It’s email the way it should be.

Sounds like a dream come true and could pose an end to phishing if more companies, and mail providers, would jump on the bandwagon of signed emails. Companies that come to my mind first are financial companies and other online stores. I still would not blindly trust any email from PayPal or eBay that would arrive in my inbox but it definitely is a step in the right direction. The best way to handle it is to visit the websites manually and perform the eBay or PayPal login there.

Auction Bloopers is a website that is offering a search for misspelled auctions at various eBay marketplaces including eBay.com, eBay.co.uk and eBay.de. The basic search requires just a search term that is entered correctly in the search box. The script will then compute misspellings of that search term and send the user to the eBay plattform that is displaying the search results for the misspellings.

Entering Playstation for instance searches for roughly 40 misspelled terms including laystation, paystation and plystation. That search alone found 302 auctions at eBay.com using on of the misspelled terms. A word filter can be used to exclude search terms from the results. Only the title of an auction is searched by default but it is not problematic to extend the search and include the description. This can be done on the eBay website directly.

The Auction Blooper’s website is displaying the most recent and most popular searches on their website as well in case you cannot think of anything that you might want to find.

The eBay Auction Inquisitor analyses auctions for the user. The user has to provide an auction id which is visible on every item page on eBay and the program will analyse the auction and the seller in 25 tests. This includes seller sale history, seller feedback, Return Policy, Payment and Feedback Tests.

A list with all tests is generated and presented to the user with a final analysis that displays passed, unclear and failed tests. What I really like about the software is that it is easy to use. The only user input that is required is the item id. The report is well structured and adds some well placed advise, for example it gives the advise to compare the previous sold items with the item currently on auction to make sure the seller did not sell inexpensive items and switched suddenly to cheap expensive ones.

Experienced sellers probably do not need the Auction Inquisitor but it is definitely a nice addition to new sellers, especially when it comes to buying expensive items on eBay. The tool is available for Windows and Mac OSX

Auction Inquisitor [via Pro Reviewer]

The initial price for the music collection is three million Dollars with no reserve price. That’s a great bargain if you believe the estimates that the music collection is worth more than fifty million Dollars. The auction will run another two days and the buyer will even get $10 back from eBay if he applies, is not that nice..

A website was created to answer frequently asked questions like why it is for sale, what people can expect, what home they would need to store all those records and CDs. It’s interesting that the collection would be shipped world wide, wonder how much one had to pay for the shipping costs alone.

I would be really tempted to buy the collection if I had the money to do so. It would probably take ages but I guess it would be possible to make a huge fortune by selling the records and CDs separately instead.

I’m not using eBay that often anymore since all that professional sellers turned it from a private to private auction site to one where professional sellers dominate. It never made that much sense to leave feedback for buyers anyway in my opinion and it was used by sellers to put pressure on the buyers. I more than once did not leave negative feedback because I knew that the seller would do the same not caring about the justification for the feedback.

Feedbacks are a way of finding out if a seller is honest and delivers the goods after payment. If an auction goes wrong or an dispute comes up sellers (and buyers) still have the option to contact eBay directly to sort things out.

Good move, bad move ? What’s your take on the change ?

The best way for all users would be if PayPal would display those fees before you make the transaction so that you can check them before sending the money. They do not display them however and a service like the PayPal Fee Calculator comes in handy to determine the fees that you have to pay.

You select the country and currency where the payment is coming from and send to, the monthly sales volume and some optional settings like 2.5% conversion fee, Credit Card fees or eChecks. A user can then calculate the fees if he would receive money or if he would send money to another user.

Once a fee is calculated you can take a look at the fee breakdown to see how the fee has been calculated. A currency converter is as well on the website to help you out with that as well.

via Donation Coder Forum