Protect and survive

The news that three people managed to get £300,000 out of eBay customers (and that's just the amount people complained about) shows how easy it is to perform scams online. A British teenager pulled off a similar scam and it was months before he was stopped.

EBay was one of the early success stories of the web and has spawned whole industries; there's a shop in San Francisco where you can take in second hand goods, they'll sell them on eBay for you and split the profits. It's also having a major impact on the viability of second hand book shops.

It's also that rarity for an online company: profitable. EBay has never made a loss and profits were up 40 per cent last quarter. After all, it could afford to shell out billions for Skype so there's obviously money to burn.

Which begs the question as to why it can't invest a fraction of those profits in protecting its customers. The cynic would say that as it takes a cut from each and every sale the more sales the better. Life isn't that black and white but it still leaves you wondering if it will take a class action suit before the company starts making real efforts to beat off the scammers.