Well, they did ask......

[Mr Angry]

Those terribly nice people at ebay sent me an email asking me to take part in a survey and to be as honest as possible.

Here are two of my answers which might cause them some food for thought.

Enjoy.

[Paul M]

I doubt ebay will give them a second glance.

[Wicked_and_Crazy]

I doubt they will be concerned. The selling of illegal goods is only controlled by people reporting it. If its not reported nothing is done about it. Ebay arent proactive at policing, Why should they be, a sale means money.

VM can stop cloned modems quicker that they do if they really wanted to

[Mr Angry]

I agree with you both 100%.

The fact is that ebay were brought to task several months ago by a collective of high street retail chains concerned about the sale of stolen goods.

They had to be seen to take steps about that so one would have to consider what, if any, weight has been brought to bear on them by VM.

None I suspect.

However, their inaction does not preclude me from pointing out (both) their shortcomings on this matter.

In relation to the High Street retailers a spokesman for eBay said:

"Stolen items are strictly prohibited from sale on eBay and we're committed to keeping the site free from such items. We certainly do not accept that there are a significant number of stolen items on the site".

"The reality is that we have strong relationships with a wide variety of retailers and law enforcement, and in the small number of cases where potentially stolen items are reported to us, we actively assist the police with their investigations and provide ongoing assistance in securing convictions where appropriate."


Funny that, given the recent number of posts on here detailing cloned / flashed / stolen modems for sale.

[kryogenik]

Nice one Angry chap.

FWIW, I work for a major record label and we actively search and find our products (pre-release promos specifically) on eBay, and the results are 100% spot on. eBay provide us with usernames, addresses etc ( so we may cross reference against our trusted promo people list). We seldom have to go further than this, eBay pull the auctions. I'd suggest that it's VM that are either too busy or, dare I suggest, too complacent to take care of the situation. eBay (IMO) are not the best in terms of reciprocation by any means, but they always come good for us.
I'm sure if VM were upset enough, this could be culled.

[punky]

Good on ya Mr A for actually doing something about it

[jo.v]

The people you should be angry with here are the cheeky sods that think they have the right to con you and the people stupid enough to buy modems off somebody else apart form the ISP. (Ebay should not allow this either.)
From my experience, It is a big deal within VM when we come across a possible clone.
Anyhow, cloned mac addresses would only affect the connection of that cloned modem. The bandwidth wouldnt be stolen, as only 1 modem with that mac is allowed to have an ip address at a time. (this makes sense in my head.. hard to write it down.)

There are ways that virginmedia Fault management can check for possible clone macs but it can be a long process and it is quite difficult. However, normally, we would just replce the genuine customers modem.

Myself, Id like to go meet anyone who clones modems, creates virus's and other con artists and slap them!!!

[Bonglet]

[quote=jo.v]
Anyhow, cloned mac addresses would only affect the connection of that cloned modem. The bandwidth wouldnt be stolen, as only 1 modem with that mac is allowed to have an ip address at a time. (this makes sense in my head.. hard to write it down.)[quote]

Of the details i have found out that 1 modem is allowed on that ubr with the ip and it dosent work linked nationaly so someone from north could be using someone from the souths mac and ip and be unnafected as they are on different ubr's.
way to combat that would be to link them all with a national ubr link but then you would have tons of people phoning up complaining that they couldnt access any inet as they would be fighting with the non legitimate user for control of the ip , there are other soloutions as in hard coded modems but no mention of anything from vm about the issue like a lot of others yet to fix and the national bw problem should be no1 on the list yet we still suffer can we expect decent fixes before xmas anyone in the vm loop know?.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by jo.v

The people you should be angry with here are the cheeky sods that think they have the right to con you and the people stupid enough to buy modems off somebody else apart form the ISP. (Ebay should not allow this either.)
From my experience, It is a big deal within VM when we come across a possible clone.
Anyhow, cloned mac addresses would only affect the connection of that cloned modem. The bandwidth wouldnt be stolen, as only 1 modem with that mac is allowed to have an ip address at a time. (this makes sense in my head.. hard to write it down.)

There are ways that virginmedia Fault management can check for possible clone macs but it can be a long process and it is quite difficult. However, normally, we would just replce the genuine customers modem.

Myself, Id like to go meet anyone who clones modems, creates virus's and other con artists and slap them!!!

However if that IP is cross referenced to the mac as well and a scum bag has cloned his modem with your mac, And it is then picked up by the RIAA or similar who do you think they will come after. ?

The answer need's only the space for 3 letter's at the most _ _ _

And this is the crux of the matter. ANYONE who has had their mac cloned will be in danger of getting a letter for infringment if the person who cloned your modem is using it to file share and gets that mac and ip detected.

[TheNorm]

Originally Posted by Sirius

...if the person who cloned your modem is using it to file share ...

Which is, of course, highly likely.

[ultimate]

Do they or can they clone STB? My internet is going through STB

[Jules]

Good one you for making a point of it on the survey

[Stig]

Originally Posted by Mr Angry

Funny that, given the recent number of posts on here detailing cloned / flashed / stolen modems for sale.

You can hardly call them stolen modems if Virgin/NTL tell you they don't want them back and to do what ever you want with it (as they did when my sister and mother canceled). I'm not condoning what is done with the modems.... just pointing out that if they don't want them back and allow you to keep them they are not stolen.

Virgin should collect or make sure all unused modems are returned (even if they are of no use to Virgin).

[Smok3y666]

Let me put this question to you: If the people using cloned modems were to all of a sudden become honest, paying subscribers do you really think the VM network would be any better? Do you really think that all of a sudden your browsing experience would be back to normal and all would be okay?

[kryogenik]

Originally Posted by Stig

You can hardly call them stolen modems if Virgin/NTL tell you they don't want them back and to do what ever you want with it (as they did when my sister and mother canceled). I'm not condoning what is done with the modems.... just pointing out that if they don't want them back and allow you to keep them they are not stolen.

Virgin should collect or make sure all unused modems are returned (even if they are of no use to Virgin).

Some people are selling 25 at a time....

---------- Post added at 11:45 ---------- Previous post was at 11:43 ----------

Originally Posted by Smok3y666

Let me put this question to you: If the people using cloned modems were to all of a sudden become honest, paying subscribers do you really think the VM network would be any better? Do you really think that all of a sudden your browsing experience would be back to normal and all would be okay?

That's not the point. The point is, the modems are being cloned, so people ARE being capped as the cloned modems are pinching all the bloody bandwidth.