Police email reveals Ebay investigation shambles

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By Stewart Mitchell and Barry Collins

Posted on 10 Dec 2007 at 08:14

Ebay insists it takes customer security seriously. "Our first priority is to maintain a safe and secure site for our customers and we work closely with law enforcement agencies to ensure that any criminal activity is detected and stopped before any harm is done," it claims in a statement. "The level of transparency on Ebay is far greater than anywhere on the high street and, this year, we have so far helped to secure over 200 arrests. Anyone thinking about misusing Ebay should think again."

E-crime unit

The leaked email will reignite calls for a central police department that handles reports of e-crime. The House of Lords Inquiry into Personal Internet Security recommended just that earlier this year, but its proposals were rejected by the government. "Unfortunately, the government dismissed every recommendation out of hand, and its approach seems to solely consist of putting its head in the sand," Inquiry member Lord Erroll said at the time.

Writing in PC Pro earlier this year, Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, said the UK had become a soft touch for e-crime. "Government has got to get a grip and get a grip quickly," he wrote. "At the local level this means making it a lot easier for victims of online crime to make a report to the police directly or by other channels and know that the information they give will be used.

"The United States has had an Internet Crime Complaint Centre or IC3 for some seven years. It is long past time that we developed something similar," he wrote.

Click here to read the full text of the police email sent to Ebay fraud victims

Read the March 2008 issue of PC Pro, on sale 17 January, for a full expose of Britain's failure to tackle e-crime.