January 21, 2005 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — According to reports released this week, Internet auction hosting site eBay (ebay.com), a company working to fight spam and phishing attacks targeting its customers, has itself been unknowingly involved in the distribution of the material and email address lists involved in spam attacks.
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Reports cited auctions hosted on the site offering millions of email addresses, as well as the tools used to send them out. Spam critics point out that eBay is profiting from the sale of these lists, as the site takes a cut of the proceeds from every auction.
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While the auctions mentioned this week in a Silicon.com news piece have since been taken down, message board posts say there are still many such auctions taking place on the company’s US and UK sites.
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Anti-Spam firms have requested that eBay stop listing auctions of materials such as these, but report that the company’s response has been somewhat less than encouraging. The legal means of preventing such sales are limited in the UK, leaving the responsibility in the hands of eBay in many cases.
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EBay’s terms of use forbid the sale of bulk email or mailing lists, and the tools used to send spam, but the rules have rarely proven an effective deterrent to the people involved in the business of spamming.
