E-bay... Hmmm. Just noticed something!

[joester]

We all know how E-bay is "protecting" the integrity of the oline purchasing experience by not showing complete Winning Bid ID's, right?

Try this...
Select "Watch this item", and then check your account.
You see the entire winning bidders ID! It also updates (with the new winning bidders ID) as the bids go up!

Joe

[tfflivemb2]

Not all auctions have the hidden IDs. It is my understanding that it is the seller's discretion on whether or not to make them private.

[aaa]

They've been partially obscuring bidder ids since a few months ago. It doesn't seem to be the same as the old option-by-seller "private bidders" deal.

[rkawakami]

I can't duplicate what joester said about watched auctions having the display of the highest bidder in the clear. When I click on the Customize Display option, high bidder does not appear as a selectable display option. I think it used to, since I seem to recall having it displayed before, but I haven't done that for a couple of years.

Steve, eBay has recently changed the display of the bidders list so that it anonymizes everybody's ID. Before this latest change, bids over $200 or so were masked. It was done to minimize the number of fake Second Chance offers being floated about. That caused the scammers to send out offers without regard to your position in the bidding list. I got one such fake offer when I was the fourth highest on an auction that was still active! Now, it's ALL bids no matter the amount. You only see the winner's ID after the auction ends. As far as I can tell, the system used to mask the IDs does not simply put asterisks in place of the characters that's not the first or last; those characters are also altered in the display of bidder IDs.