More eBay Shenanigans

Members of eBay, the online auction Website, were hoaxed again last week when pranksters offered up two human kidneys and three infant children to the highest bidders. The bogus (and illegal) items were quickly deleted, but not before fetching bids of $5.7 million for a kidney and $109,100 for a yet-to-be-born male child.

These were by no means the first incidents of their kind, but for some reason they attracted worldwide media attention and sent eBay executives scrambling to do damage control. Vice president of marketing Steve Westly told Reuters that "eBay has zero tolerance for illegal items on the site. We have a very clear policy against this." The International Herald Tribune reported that at least one of the online kidney auctions is being investigated by law enforcement officials.

The child auctions, says eBay, were copycat pranks inspired by the notoriety of the kidney auctions one week earlier. "All of the sudden we see this turn up in the press and we see a little flurry," a spokesman told the Associated Press.

Hoaxes are endemic to the Net and it should come as no surprise that eBay is a prime target. Pranksters tend to seek out venues offering the largest possible audiences – eBay boasts over 1.5 billion page views per month. There are strict rules against fraudulent or illegal auctions, but of necessity eBay's 5 million members conduct their business largely on the honor system. There's no practical way to screen out hoaxes before they're posted.

Although pranksters have struck dozens of times during the auction site's four-year history, its security record is actually quite impressive, considering there are over 2 million items up for bid on any given day. Incidents have mostly consisted of relatively harmless practical jokes, though a few have violated state and federal laws.

Among the more notorious items offered up for bid have been:

• Item #138277430: "Young Man's Virginity"
• Item #144578519: "My Toe Nail Clippings - 31 Inches long"
• Item #137791608: "Bob Eubanks"
• Item #148159933: "Alien Baby Fetus Preserved In Bottle"
• Item #117214617: "Pure, Uncut Cocaine" (200 lbs. of it)
• Item #120880436: "F117a Nighthawk" (Stealth fighter plane)

These digital high jinks are all very amusing, but one wonders what has become of that formerly precious commodity known as Truth. In an age where phony auctions can rack up millions of dollars in equally phony bids, does Truth have any value left at all?

I'm pleased to inform you the answer is yes. It's worth $565, to be exact. For details, see Item #125294942: "Truth."

Update:

$10,000,000 Pot Auction Busted on eBay
Tuesday, Sept. 21 – they're at it again!

Relevant Links:

Reuters: 'Online Bidders Offer Millions For Human Kidney'
eBay calls organ offerings a "relative rarity"

BBC News: 'Kidney sale on Web halted'
"The macabre bidding started at $25,000..."

Associated Press: 'EBay takes down offers of babies for sale'
AP notes that the auction offered "intelligence scores of parents upon request"

ZDNN: 'Want to Buy a Used Kidney?'
A 1998 incident that occurred on Yahoo's auction site

Archive of eBay Pranks
From WhatTheHeck.com

Top Ten Bizarre Online Auctions
From AuctionWatch.com

Current Net Hoaxes
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