One of the biggest problems in eBay is shill bidding. Shill bidding is when a secondary account of the seller (or a new one created on the spot) is used to "bid an item up", artificially raising the overall price you will be paying for the auction. Sometimes, the shiller makes a mistake and goes over board, in which case, the seller must pay the eBay fees or chance getting caught.
A shiller may also be a different person working along with the seller with the intent of artificially raising the bid and, in some cases, "getting a piece of the pie". Shill bidding is a bad thing on eBay and could cost any eBayer a lot of extra money for coins that would have been bought for much cheaper otherwise.
Ebay, naturally could care less about shillers. You see, shillers help to raise the price of the auction, and thus the amount of money that eBay receives for the sell.
Well, as of today (as far as I know it was implemented today), bidder IDs will now only be visible to the bidder and the seller ONLY in EVERY auction! That means that you can no longer research a suspect bidder to determine shills and report them. The new eBay system gives you certain demographics on the ID in question (such as number of bids, bid frequency with that seller, retractions, etc.) but you have no way of identifying the suspect shiller by researching actual items bid and referencing Power Seller cartels and associates, etc.
Another thing about this new system they have implemented, is the bidders are identified as "Bidder1", "Bidder2", "Bidder3", etc. Unscrupulous sellers now have the opportunity to create new shill bidders and attack the low volume sellers with these false bidders and make claims against them to get rid of "competition". There are so many things that can be done on this kind of system that hurts those who actually use eBay.
I would personally highly suggest that those who use eBay be VERY careful, both buyer and low volume seller. This new system has nothing to do with "privacy" and "protecting the users" as eBay has claimed. It is simply to ensure that they have covered themselves legally on issues of California law that had been brought to their attention two weeks ago, but has some very unsettling ramifications when thinking of all the unscrupulous sellers on eBay to begin with and this new weapon they now wield.
This is just my rant on the issue, do as you please, but again, caveat emptor!
EDITTED:
I guess I should link at least one instance of the new bidder history on eBay.
here is an example of the new bidder history system. It will probably take some time for all current auctions to become affected.
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