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Bid sniping is a dubious practice used in online auctions whereby a bidder makes a bid in the closing moments in an attempt to deny other bidders time to react. The primary goal for a bid sniper is to win the auction for the lowest price possible, without the risk of being forced into submitting any higher bids if there is competition for the item....
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Context 1
... our analysis, we examined 'late bids' submitted over several time frames based on whether they were submitted within 60, 30, 15, 5 and 1 minute(s) of the time remaining. Figure 1 A shows a percentage of auctions with late bids. This indicates that the following percentages for each time frame respectively are 57.05% ...
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... from an earlier time are inclusive of the time frames closer to the auction's close. Figure 1 B shows the percentage change between each time frame respectively is 0.89% (60 -30 mins), 2.39% (30 -15 mins), 4.88% (15 -5 mins), 17.16% (5 -1 min) and 31.72% (1 -0 min). ...
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... almost 60% of the auctions under study had bids that can be considered as late and nearly 50% contained potential sniper bids. Figure 1 C tries to ascertain what percentage of bidders can potentially be considered as bid snipers. Specifically, we concentrated on 'first time bidders' during these periods. ...
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... of a total of 26, 763 bidders, the following percentage of auctions with first time bidders in each respective time frame is 18.25% -4, 886 bidders (60 mins), 17.14% -4, 589 bidders (30 mins), 15.14% -4, 052 bidders (15 mins), 12.19% -3, 263 bidders (5 mins), and 6.01% -1, 611 bidders (1 min). Figure 1 D shows the percentage change between each time frame respectively is 1.1% (60 -30 mins), 2% (30 -15 mins), 2.95% (15 -5 mins), 6.17% (5 -1 min) and 6.01% (1 -0 min). The greatest increase occurs in the last 5 minutes. ...
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... approximately 12% of the auctions under study contained what could be considered as bid snipers with up to 18.25% being definitely suspicious late bidders. Figure 1 E shows the percentage of bids placed by 'late' or potential bid snipers (identified above). The percentage for each respective time frame is 10.54% -12, 716 bids (60 mins), 9.63% -11, 626 bids (30 mins), 8% -9, 653 bids (15 mins), 5.66% -6, 840 bids (5 mins) and 1.89% -2, 248 bids (1 min). ...
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... percentage for each respective time frame is 10.54% -12, 716 bids (60 mins), 9.63% -11, 626 bids (30 mins), 8% -9, 653 bids (15 mins), 5.66% -6, 840 bids (5 mins) and 1.89% -2, 248 bids (1 min). Figure 1 F shows the percentage change between each time frame respectively is 0.9% (60 -30 mins), 1.63% (30 -15 mins), 2.33% (15 -5 mins), 3.77% (5 -1 min) and 1.89% (1 -0 min). This suggests that the proportion of sniping bids is extremely small compared to the proportion of snipers. ...
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An electronic auction is an element of electronic commerce which uses the internet for procurement. E-auction has been a popular method for retailing and purchasing products and services online. In this paper the proposed e-auction models for the most prevalent classes of auction which are: forward auction and reverse auction are presented. These o...
Citations
... An important topic discussed in the literature was the use of so-called snipers (programs that automatically submit an offer shortly before the end of the auction, often giving no chance to react to other bidders). Numerous studies have analyzed the impact of these programs on the following problems: an overstatement of the final price achieved in the auction (Bapna, Day, Rice 2020); the possibility of achieving price equilibrium (Bose, Daripa, 2017); dampening the dynamics of the auction (Trevathan, Read, Lee, Atkinson, 2011); dissuading customers from being able to make an effective offer (Backus, Blake, Masterov, Tadelis, 2015). ...
Research background: E-commerce is developing rapidly, especially during the Covid19 pandemic. This fact can benefit individuals who want to sell their already used goods. Importantly, for sellers, it is not always a priority to get the highest price, but sometimes it is simply effective to get rid of the goods at a satisfactory price.
Purpose: The aim of this article is to analyze the impact of the broadly understood time of the end of the online auction on the success or failure of a sale.
Research methodology: In the study, the raw odds ratio was used for the effect of a single variable. Next, the impact of specific variables within the set of risk factors was determined using the logistic regression.
Results: Auctions ending in the evening were found to be more than 150% more likely to be successful, while night hours reduced the chance of success by 50%. The day’s most favorable for sales are Monday and Tuesday, the opposite pattern was observed for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. An interesting relationship was found for the second half of the month, which increased the possibility of selling the goods by over 20%.
Novelty: In the literature there are almost none that would focus on the analysis of the possibility of ending the auction with a sale (i.e. success) in the context of the auction end time on the Central European market. This issue is usually discussed on the side and has not been analyzed comprehensively – this paper is a step forward in this direction.
... The precise learning algorithms used in some of these packages are intellectual property of the software company and are required to be protected. 4. Software agents for online auction sniping [51] may contain decision-making strategies that, if known to a competitor, could be circumvented. 5. ...
Most recent theoretical literature on program obfuscation is based on notions like Virtual Black Box (VBB) obfuscation and indistinguishability Obfuscation (iO). These notions are very strong and are hard to satisfy. Further, they offer far more protection than is typically required in practical applications. On the other hand, the security notions introduced by software security researchers are suitable for practical designs but are not formal or precise enough to enable researchers to provide a quantitative security assurance. Hence, in this paper, we introduce a new formalism for practical program obfuscation that still allows rigorous security proofs. We believe our formalism will make it easier to analyse the security of obfuscation schemes. To show the flexibility and power of our formalism, we give a number of examples. Moreover, we explain the close relationship between our formalism and the task of providing obfuscation challenges. This is the full version of the paper. In this version, we also give a new rigorous analysis of several obfuscation techniques and we provide directions for future research.
... Trevathan and Read [44,45] define a bid sniper as having the following characteristics: ...
Online auctions are a popular means for exchanging items over the Internet. However, participants can behave in an undesirable manner during an auction in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage at the expense of rivals. Such conduct is a problem as it results in market failure, thereby inhibiting the usefulness of online auctions as an exchange medium. This paper presents a taxonomy of the fraudulent behaviour that can occur while an online auction is in-progress. We examine the perpetrator's mindset for the following dubious practices: shill bidding, bid sniping, bid shielding, and bid siphoning. We propose the characteristics of such behaviour, the strategies employed, identify the expected pay-off for the perpetrator, and present a novel “Victim Sphere” that outlines who is negatively affected by bad behaviour. We also briefly outline the current state of prevention and detection mechanisms—identifying gaps and open questions where applicable. We contrast the types of undesirable and fraudulent behaviour, describe how they are interrelated, and discuss the challenges researchers face when devising and testing fraud detection/prevention techniques for in-auction fraud. This paper serves as a platform to raise research interest in tackling the remaining challenges for combating in-auction fraud.
... The majority of online auctions terminate at a preset expiration time. This characteristic allows bidders to engage in a dubious bidding practice referred to as bid sniping (see [Bapna 2003, Wenyan and Alvaro 2008, Leonardo and Ruy 2009, Shah et al. 2002, Trevathan et al. 2011). Bid sniping is an act by which a bidder submits a bid in the closing moments of an auction. ...
... However, the strategy employed by a sniper is very specific in order to achieve such an outcome. By studying eBay auctions where sniping had occurred, results from the literature [Milgrom and Weber 1982, Roth and Ockenfels 2002, Tan et al 2009, and through practical experience at sniping ourselves [Trevathan et al 2011], we determined the core strategies for being a successful sniper in an online auction. The following outlines the major strategy/goals a bid sniper will follow: Win the auction: The sniper is in the game to win, and will bid accordingly to ensure that this happens. ...
... [Roth and Ockenfels 2002] also observed that 18% of the bids were made in the last 60 seconds. [Trevathan et al 2011] more recently analyzed data from 4,298 eBay auctions. They concluded that the majority of auctions have late bids (in the last 60 minutes), and a significant proportion of bidders only commence bidding in the final 60 minutes and submit very few bids – consistent with a bid sniping strategy. ...
Bid sniping is the most common strategy used in online auctions whereby the bidder places a bid in the closing seconds in order to win the auction. This denies other bidders the time to react and suppresses the final price. While bid sniping is beneficial to the winner, it disadvantages other bidders and the seller does not get the full amount of revenue s/he might otherwise have received in a truly competitive and fair auction. This paper proposes a method to help negate bid sniping as a dominant strategy for winning in online auctions. We propose an amendment to the auction format that allows for a random undisclosed time-out extension should new bids be received in the closing moments. This entices bidders to bid their true valuation up front, otherwise they risk having the auction terminate and therefore not accept any new bids. Several variations of the amended auction format are presented that effectively counteract bid snipers by making it difficult to gain any information by observing the underlying algorithm. To ensure the auction does not continue indefinitely, the format includes mechanisms that place random bounds on the size of, and number of extensions permitted. Our proposal also makes intelligent decisions to maximize the price for the seller based on the auction‟s bid volume. The size of the extension granted is based on the timing and aggressiveness of how bids are being submitted. To our knowledge, no existing online auctioneers offer such a comprehensive format for actively discouraging bid sniping.
Human cheating has been a barrier to establishing trust among e-commerce users, throughout the last two decades. In particular, in online auctions, since all the transactions occur among anonymous users, trust is difficult to establish and maintain. Shill bidding happens when bidders bid exclusively to inflate (in forward auctions) or deflate (in reverse auctions) prices in online auctions. At present, shill bidding is the most severe and persistent form of cheating in online auctions, but still there are only a few or no established techniques for shill defense at run-time. In this paper, I evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches to combating shill bidding. I also propose the ShillFree1 auction system to secure and protect auction systems from shill bidders for both forward and reverse auctions. More precisely, by using a variety of bidding behavior and user history, proposed auction system prevents, monitors and detects shill activities in real time. Moreover, to detect shilling thoroughly I propose IP tracking techniques. The system also takes necessary actions against shill activities at run-time. The experimental results demonstrate that, by prevention, detection and response mechanisms, the proposed auction system keeps the auction users secured from shill bidding and therefore establishes trust among online auction users.
