The bid bombers of eBay

How a group of e-vigilantes, furious at profiteers attempting to cash in on the WTC tragedy, fought back.

By Gretchen Dukowitz

Oct 15, 2001 | As soon as the World Trade Center came down on Sept. 11, souvenirs featuring the Twin Towers went up for auction on eBay. The mementos were the sort of touristy kitsch that Times Square vendors usually can't give away. But in the wake of the attacks, postcards that you can still buy 10 for a dollar on the street were suddenly selling for $30 apiece on the auction site, while cheap snow globes with plastic skylines were going for as much as $600. A special edition of the New York Post printed a day after the attack (cost to the initial buyer: a quarter) was listed for a hefty $15,000.

With seedy characters no doubt salivating over the millions in cash, bonds, precious metals and merchandise still buried beneath the ruins of the World Trade Center, the online profiteering rush in the days after the disaster may have been one of the least odious ways to exploit the tragedy. But it was still enough to spur one group of people into action.

"It made me sick to see people, parasites really, sell World Trade Center memorabilia. They were obviously trying to make money on this horrible tragedy," said a woman from Florida trading under the name Paige7777. She and a loose-knit band of eBay users decided to put an end to the trading by "bid bombing" -- making fake bids on items they wanted to get off the site. Bidding under names like "wtc_robin_hood" and "urasickoo," they snapped up every World Trade Center souvenir, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth, as fast as sellers could list them. The catch? They had no intention of coughing up the cash for any of it.

In the world of online auctions every tragedy or human misdeed means a chance to go rooting around in the attic for a quick way to make a few extra bucks, and this wasn't the first time eBay has gotten into trouble for listing controversial items. Nazi memorabilia, Timothy McVeigh T-shirts, pieces of the bullet-riddled door where Amadou Diallo was killed and even human organs (though these proved to be a hoax) have all appeared in auctions and caused consternation. But the reaction of the bid bombers to the WTC speculation is especially interesting for at least two reasons. It demonstrates how bidders can manipulate the system in an attempt to police it themselves, and it shines a hard light on some of eBay's internal contradictions -- it may not always be in eBay's best financial interest to crack down thoroughly on distasteful auctioning.

Next Page: Were the bid bombers terrorists of their own kind?

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