Penny Auction Sites: Legit or Scam?

Penny Auction Sites: Legit or Scam?

Penny Auction Sites: Legit or Scam?

While penny auctions can be a great way to score somebig savings, not all Penny Auction websites are trustworthy. Most of them do not have sufficient users participating in their auctions. With no competition for a product the item will sell too early, leaving the owners unprofitable. To remedy this problem, the seller will fraudulently add in bid-bots or ghost bidders. These bid-bots will continue to outbid the real customers until they fold. This allows the site owner to take money from the customer who purchased bids without ever having the burden of dealing with a real winner whom they must ship the product to. It is relatively easy to spot which sites are using ghost bidders and which ones are not.

How to spot a penny auction scam using Firebug

Firebug is a great method used to weed out which penny auction sites are using autobidders or bidbots. First, you must be using Mozilla Firefox as your browser. You can then download Firebug here. Follow the install instructions. Now open up your Firefox browser, go to Tools, find Firebug, and click Open Firebug. The screen will look like this:

Notice at the bottom how the Console tab is opened. This is what we will be using to point out a scam.

When you sign up for a penny auction site you must always register with an email address. They then will usually send you a confirmation email to click on. With Firebug, you can see the email addresses of the most recent bidders. Take a look at this picture of one of the trusted penny auction sites; Cheap Electronics Depot.

Trusted Penny Auction Site

Notice inside the red square we have created, that there is indeed a user with an email address bidding on this item. If a penny auction is a scam, then no email address shows up. Instead you will just see email " ". How could someone possibly be placing bids if they don't have an e-mail address registered with the penny auction site? Well, it is because they are not a real user. They are an autobidder designed to make sure you do not win. Here is an example:

Penny Auction Scam

Notice how the email just shows " ". This is clearly a scam and something you should avoid.

Firebug is not a full proof plan for being able to tell which penny auctions are scams, but it can prove very useful. Feel free to test it out, if you aren't sure about purchasing bids on a site.

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