Bruce Schneier, security expert and international man about town, has blogged about his less-than-impressive eBay sales experience.

Bruce had a Sony Vaio notebook that was never used (read: got for free) and decided to put it on eBay, sadly all that was bad about the online auction experience popped into his lap(top). First it was bought by a hacker, and then once relisted it was bought by a thief.

Things weren't looking too good for Bruce and his laptop. In fact he compares the whole 'on/off' laptop listing affair to being the victim of a denial of service attack. This is strong - but Bruce lives in Minneapolis and works for BT so we guess with all that travelling his time is uber-important. After all you can't check your eBay account on a plane. Yet.

Thankfully for Bruce thrice was the charm, and on its third listing the notebook shifted for some $1,500 - roughly half its highstreet value. Perhaps he should have signed it or included a lock of his hair in the auction, we can't help but think that that would have made it appeal to a much-higher class of potential buyer in the first place.

By the way if you do have any unwanted alice bands or scrunchies for sale, Bruce has a pretty good rep on the 'Bay with 21 positive rankings to his name.

22 Jun 2009