A deaf woman is suing eBay, saying that the company's telephone-based seller verification system breaches laws protecting disabled people from discrimination.

Melissa Earll from Nevada, Missouri says that eBay's identification system breaches federal and California state laws. The system places automated calls to new sellers, requiring them to listen to a PIN given verbally on the telephone, and then enter that into the site, to prove that the phone number they've provided is correct. Ms Earll cannot hear the number, and so cannot complete the verification.

Ms Earll has repeatedly asked the company to provide her with another method of verifying her identity, but they have failed to do so. Her attorney says that "at one point, eBay even suggested that she just find someone who can hear normally to answer her phone for her."

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While President Obama's push to raise federal income taxes for the wealthy gets lots of attention, the continuing upward creep in the sales tax rates imposed by state and local governments has gotten less notice.

But Vertex Inc., which calculates sales tax for Internet sellers, reports that the average general sales tax rate nationwide reached 8.629% at the end of 2009, the highest since the Berwyn, Pa., company started tracking data in 1982. That was up a nickel on a taxable $100 purchase from a year earlier and up nearly 40 cents for the decade. The highest sales tax rate in the country now stands at 12%.

In Pictures: America's Highest Sales Taxes

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For golfers who pay hundreds for a single putter, it was a dream come true - top branded clubs being offered on eBay for as little as £35.

Thousands across the world were tempted and parted with an estimated £3million.

But when an Essex pensioner complained about the quality of her purchase she helped unravel the auction site's biggest ever fraud.

The clubs were fakes, produced in a Chinese factory in a scam masterminded from Essex by Gary Bellchambers, 46.

Christine Manz had complained to Bellchambers about the poor quality of a club she bought. But when she was ignored, she went to her local trading standards office.

The pensioner was not the only customer who was left unhappy with their buy.

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Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted eBay's motion for summary judgment, dismissing a lawsuit filed by several eBay users alleging anti-competitive activity by eBay and PayPal.

Michael Malone filed a lawsuit in April 2007 alleging that eBay "utilizes its nationwide monopoly of the on-line auction market to monopolize the available forms of payment that sellers can use on eBay." A second class-action complaint was filed by Ann Farmer and Todd Van Pelt on April 23, 2007, and the two lawsuits were consolidated.


the story at auctionbytes:
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The eBayMotorsSucks blog, written by former eBay Motors seller Ed Koon, published a video on February 18 that shows an eBay Motors listing redirecting to an off-eBay site. He wrote, "Watch as this 2007 Chevy Tahoe listing sweeps me off of eBay to a hacked website." He refers to a well known redirect scam that AuctionBytes has covered and was documented by US-CERT.

It's a compelling video, and Mr. Koon told us he has talked to at least one recent victim of such the scam. We asked eBay abut Mr. Koon's video, and spokesperson Johnna Hoff provided the following statement:
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eBay is working to patch a cross-site request forgery vulnerability recently uncovered by a security researcher. The Avnet researcher also discovered cross-site scripting and blind SQL injection bugs in eBay's online auction site, which eBay has fixed.

eBay is working on a fix for a cross-site request forgery problem that could allow an attacker to change a user's password and get access to that user's account.

The vulnerability is one of several affecting eBay that were recently uncovered and shared with eWEEK by Nir Goldshlager, a researcher with Avnet Information Security Consulting. Among the vulnerabilities are cross-site scripting bugs in the eBay Live Help support page and eBay To Go, which the company fixed by validating user input. In addition, Goldshlager uncovered a blind SQL injection problem in the eBay donations Website.

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