Auctions

Computer Auction Sites

A computer auction sites allows a company to dispose of their used computers that are deemed as redundant or non-performing. In fact, there is no need to simply dump the used computers in the trash. Instead as a business entrepreneur, one can take advantage of the incredible opportunities that computer auction sites provide. There are various online companies who are conducting auctions of all types of items and that includes auctions for computers that are no longer in use in their computer auction sites.

There are many ways these computer auction sites can be beneficial such as if you wish to buy or sell used computers, used computer parts, or computer software, or exchange your old computer with a new updated computer then computer auction sites are the perfect place to do it. The computer auction sites are the forum that unites buyers, sellers, service providers, as well as computer experts from around the world. Everyone can attend a used computer auction and find the computer parts and equipment that they need the most.

Online computer auction sites are immensely popular, however, the popularity of various online auction sites also makes them a target for crooks. There were several complaints referred to law enforcement agencies last year by the federal Internet Crime Complaint Center, regarding Internet auction fraud, such as failure to deliver goods after a sale etc. Many such people who commit these frauds had been purged out from an online auction site for their online behaviors. Some of the researchers have already developed the software to provide a trustworthiness score for individual user IDs. Although they are still not available to the public, however, NetProbe score can be used as a user reputation scores that many computer auction sites already provide to help prevent fraud.

But there are still many crooks, who can manipulate these feedback scores by obtaining a good score by doing few number of legitimate sales. But these exercises are costly and time-consuming as well. Once the crook starts cheating buyers, that user identification is quickly red-flagged and shut down.

Committing frauds may be continued, however, if a fraudster has accomplices or sets up separate user IDs to serve as accomplices. These accounts transact legitimate business and maintain good reputations. They also make many transactions with the user IDs of fraudsters, using their good reputations to boost the fraudsters' feedback scores. Because accomplices don't perpetrate frauds, they usually escape notice and can keep working to establish new fraudster accounts.

But an unnatural pattern becomes clearly visible, when the transactions are plotted in a graph, with each user represented as a node, or dot, and transactions between individual users represented by lines connecting the nodes.

Article Published: Thursday 19th July 2007