Ebay Pulse Scam

[Admin]

This is the official eBay Pulse scam thread. Any questions or comments can be asked in here and I will try to answer them to the best of my knowledge.

( In regards to this post )
http://www.gurucreation.com/2008/04/eba ... -scam.html

[Batmeds]

Holy sh*t this is HUGE - please sell me the software!

Just kidding man but that is awesome that you outed them like that. I can't wait to see what happens next. I also can't believe you never used the software yourself, talk about self control! Those guys on the Pulse are scum and I am tired of seeing there garbage paraded all over the Pulse when it's clear something fishy was going on.

I applaud you that's about all I can say.

[Admin]

One thing I didn't mention in the post about scheduling your auction. You will not be able to see the number watchers you have through your eBay back office to any item that you have scheduled.

You need so option through you eBay back office to receive DAILY updates on your auctions. In this email it will give information such as the number of bidders, time left on your auction and the number of watchers. This works for scheduled auctions as well and it's the ONLY way to see the number or watchers on a scheduled auction.

[Chad Pifer]

I agree with Batmeds. This is about as big as it gets. I really expect to see this on traditional news media within a few days. Great job for figuring this out!

By the way, this looks like a nice place. Hopefully I'll be posting more soon.

[Admin]

I agree with Batmeds. This is about as big as it gets. I really expect to see this on traditional news media within a few days. Great job for figuring this out!

By the way, this looks like a nice place. Hopefully I'll be posting more soon.

Thanks Chad, I have actually know about this for some time but didn't release it because I didn't want to be the "rat". I didn't expect this scam to go on for as long as it has and to be honest I think eBay knows what is going on but chooses not to do anything for some reason.

...and thanks for the feedback about the form I hope to see you around.

FYI: I am in the process of upgrading hosting so there may be some down time.

[Chad Pifer]

Your right. I would have to assume eBay would know something about it. I can't quite figure out why they would let it be though. Could they really bring in that much from the sales of these listings? Outside of financial I can't fathom any other motivators for eBay to let it continue.

This should certainly be an interesting thread to watch as news spreads.

[Admin]

I can't see eBay making that much money off a few 15 - 20 dollar auctions per day. There has to be some other motivation behind this that I haven't figured out yet. Hopefully others will have some useful information and we can put this puzzle together.

[Proximity]

Whoa this is sweet!! I have been following the Pulse for a while and trying to figure out what's been going on. This makes perfect sense that mystergiant is behind it all.

He was the original Pulse king from years ago. As others came and went he was ALWAYS on there no matter what. I actually talked with him about 1.5 years ago and he did mention a trick to get up there but he wouldn't say what it was. Now I see why this might hurt a little bit

[Admin]

UPDATE

This is a quote from Josh aka:jjfjq

Please fill me in....

Of course you know who I am...my warrior name is Josh **** ( edited for privacy by Admin )...I'm not hiding anything.

Let me tell you, I didn't know how MysteryGiant was getting my listings on the pulse until I read your post. At first I thought he owned a high traffic website, and was just posting the auctions, and perhaps asking, or giving people an incentive to watch them. This was back when my auctions would get less than 10k watchers and make the pulse. But as the numbers climbed, I figured he must be doing something else....but I wasn't sure what.

About a year ago I was contact by him...he said he liked my product and wanted to promote it as an affiliate.

I of course agreed to this. Shortly after, some of my auctions, (the auctions I had agreed to pay him a commission on) started making the pulse.

I asked him about it, and he said everything was legit, nothing to worry about. Since I knew he had been doing this for about a year before he contacted me, I assumed he must be telling the truth.

I also think your video is pretty believable, and this must be how he is generating the watchers.

So here I sit, just observing, trying to figure it all out.

and this

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, that is the 100% truth.

I was selling about $3k net profit worth of my eBook on eBay per month.

MysteryGiant contacted me, and asked if he could promote my product. I had never spoken with him before.

I agreed, and this is where we are today.

I understand that you were not "aiming" for me. I do not personally know Kekoa, but I have emailed back and forth a few times with him regarding JVs, etc... For all I know, he was brought into this the same way I was.

Josh

In the conversation we had I explained in a little more detail what was going on. I let Josh know that I was not targeting him personally. My goal was to "out" Mystergiant and expose what he is doing.

For the record: I don't want to see anyone fall into any legal trouble or anything of the sort. I don't even know if what mystergiant is doing could or even would be prosecutable. I just want to see the domination of the eBay Pulse end so everyone that supports eBay by using their website has an equal chance of reaching the Pulse legitimately.

[Admin]

UPDATE

It appears that "jjfjq" has pulled his auction off the eBay Pulse which he stated he would.

[Admin]

If you would like to see this get some attention you can digg it http://digg.com/tech_news/Ebay_Pulse_Scam

[Batmeds]

I can't believe this story hasn't been picked up more. Admin if I was in your shoes I would Press Release the hell out of this. You have great evidence of what is going on and this a huge "find" epically because it's eBay.

Exposing loop holes on major websites like eBay is big freaking news. I'm not telling you what to do but if I were you I would really push this story hard. I bet your story would be picked up by traditional media which equals MONSTER traffic.

[Admin]

Batmeds - my goal was to end the monopoly that mystergiant had on the eBay Pulse. It looks like that may have already happened so I don't really see a need to take this any further. There was however a Press Release sent out on a small newswire but it was for SEO purpose's and not to get exposure.

I'm targeting the word ( Ebay Pulse ) for a page

[mpp]

Great story. I hated that Mysterygiant was in that number one spot for so long. At one point I was selling ebooks and bizarre auctions on Ebay and it was always helpful to be on the pulse. It was lots easier to get there back then when you only needed a couple hundred watchers to make it on the front page. People like WooHoo were there regularly back then and getting there generated alot of traffic to your listing. I had one listing with over 300,000 page views in a weeks time. Then about 1 1/2-2 years ago Ebay made changes and you could only get there based on the number of unique watchers. I have always known you could set up a macro program to go through the steps for you and have a set list of watchers continualy add each of your new auctions to their watch list. The category I sold in before I left ebay back in January was antique furniture and I was always at the top of the Antiques page of the pulse using that system as well as having alot of watch links on my auction pages. Typically 60-70-80 watchers will get you to the front of the furniture page and 150-200 will get you to the antiques page. The front pulse page which I was on maybe a dozen times before the changes a year and a half ago only took 250 or so to achieve.

Not sure what code Ebay could use to stop it if all the watchers are unique.

[BuckBuck]

Amazing story. This is all i can say. Where did you find the software? On some kind of P2P network?

[Batmeds]

Amazing story. This is all i can say. Where did you find the software? On some kind of P2P network?

Hehe, I doubt he would answer that. If he did you would have every person on the Internet looking for it Well at least I would be.

[mpp]

Do a search on google for macro program. Basicaly what it does is copy a set of moves you make and then you set it to repeat the pattern until you stop it. Then have it copy a move similar to the following. Click on community at the top of your ebay page, then eneter your user id in the Search for Member box. Then click the box next to each of your auctions. Then click compare, then click watch all. Now you have just added all your auctions to your watch list. Then you need to log out of that user name and log in with another user name. Then repeat the process above. The macro program will copy each step you made click by click. Your biggest problem is in timing because you need to move real slow the first time you do it too make up for pages that dont load fast etc. The macro program will make your next mouse click for you whether the page has loaded or not so allow time between clicks when you first set up the program. Also you need ebay IDs. Go to someplace like Hotmail and make a name like watch1, then watch2 etc. Get as many as you want. Watch1 may be linked to Joe Schmo 1 at anyplace USA. Watch 2 may be linked to Joe Schmo 2 at #1 anyplace USA and so on. Ebay does not confirm information provided when you register unless you bid or sell. If you are only watching auctions the Schmo family could have 100 ebay names or more. Each can be watching up to 100 of your auctions. You can figure it out from there. Not at all hard to do even manually.

[Admin]

UPDATE

It's been some time since I last ran the software so I figured I would run it again to see if it still works. It appears that eBay has fixed the loophole that was allowing it to work.

If you go to any foreign eBay website such as https://scgi.ebay.com.sg/ws/eBayISAPI.d ... trksid=m37 you will notice that they now require you to enter a Captcha code on this page. The last time I tested the software they did not require this ( 4-5 months ago ). This throws off the software and causes an error.

It was able to get around the Captcha that would pop up sometimes before by running task manager. TM would automatically close and restart the software when a Captcha would pop up. This worked because the software was running Tor to change the IP address. Every time the software restarted it would use a new IP address and in the past you were able to register 10 - 15 accounts before the Captcha would pop up.

Now that the Captcha is always required and not random this renders the software useless.

What this means it that mystergiant has been using the second method for gaining watchers successfully for some time now. I haven't done any more research on this method but it's obvious it was still working up to a few days ago when Josh had his auction on the Pulse.

If someone else would like to see if they can figure out how "method 2" works and wants to email me or post here go for it. I won't be able to dig into this any further for a while because we have a new website launching soon.

[Intimed]

Admin I don't know if you realize it but that software still works. I had an IT/Programmer guy at work reverse engineer it for me. He had to change the way the software fills in the fields on the register pages. I guess the old Ebay register pages were different because he added and moved around a few fields.

The only other thing that is different now is that you have to manually fill in each captcha. It takes about 4 seconds for an account to be created then when you fill in the captcha it takes another 4-5 seconds to add the auctions to be watched. He didn't see any way around the captcha but you could still use it to add thousands of watchers if you did the captcha by hand.

( mpp ) is right about Ebay not confirming user ID's when you create them. They only make you confirm an Ebay ID if you are bidding on or selling an item. You can watch a million auctions and you never have to confirm your account.

Just though I would let you know in case you wanted to take the DL link down. On the other hand it looks like Ebay has shut down the pulse so I don't know if it really matters.

[Admin]

Admin I don't know if you realize it but that software still works. I had an IT/Programmer guy at work reverse engineer it for me. He had to change the way the software fills in the fields on the register pages. I guess the old Ebay register pages were different because he added and moved around a few fields.

The only other thing that is different now is that you have to manually fill in each captcha. It takes about 4 seconds for an account to be created then when you fill in the captcha it takes another 4-5 seconds to add the auctions to be watched. He didn't see any way around the captcha but you could still use it to add thousands of watchers if you did the captcha by hand.

( mpp ) is right about Ebay not confirming user ID's when you create them. They only make you confirm an Ebay ID if you are bidding on or selling an item. You can watch a million auctions and you never have to confirm your account.

Just though I would let you know in case you wanted to take the DL link down. On the other hand it looks like Ebay has shut down the pulse so I don't know if it really matters.

Thanks for the heads up,

I didn't even take into consideration that someone could fix it and I did remove the download link for now at least. I'm pretty sure eBay is finally doing something about the Pulse manipulation. After I published the blog post everything was removed from the Pulse home page a few hours later.

...Guess time will tell.

As far as not having to confirm an eBay account I know that the foreign eBay websites didn't require it but I'm not sure about eBay.com.