New e-bay developments (reported by J.J. Blair on April 11, 2007):
eBay has just changed a policy that makes it now harder to identify fraudulent auctions, and impossible to notify unsuspecting bidders:
A hallmark of fake auctions was the "bidder ID kept private" option, so that you could not warn bidders. But now, eBay has changed their policy to not list bidder IDs at all, and the original option to do so has been removed: all bidders are listed now as "Bidder 1", "Bidder 2", etc.
They said they did this to eliminate fake second chance offerings, but it's opened up another can of worms, IMO.
So, anybody who took comfort in bidding on auctions that didn't use this option, beware. Make sure to look at other tell tale signs, such as zero feedback, or no activity on the seller's account for an extended period of time.