We will further explain how eBay stealth accounts can help your business and what else may be required to increase sales effectiveness for mass consumers.
What Is an eBay Stealth Account?
eBay has always been and now remains one of the largest platforms for online auctions. You can sell both new and old things here, act on behalf of a company or complete sales as an individual. It's the only place where you can find some unique items, which makes the platform so valuable among collectors.
Since its launch in 1995 (originally named AuctionWeb), eBay's target audience has significantly increased. According to data obtained in 2022, over 134 million customers used the online auction platform. Around 17 million sellers are registered here. eBay accounts for approximately 4.7% of the entire internet sales market share in the United States. The company competes with giants like Amazon, Walmart, Alibaba/AliExpress etc. The website receives over 3 billion monthly visits. It's worth noting that it was eBay that acquired and expanded PayPal. It also participated in other large-scale projects.
Sellers consider eBay a profitable platform for advertising, promoting their products and services as well as conducting direct sales.
A Stealth eBay Account is an account registered with someone else's or fake (non-existent) personal data.
It doesn't differ from millions of other accounts for eBay, and that's its major advantage. The real account owner remains unnoticed (hidden). This is where the term "stealth” appeared.
Such behavior contradicts eBay's rules, but it’s quite challenging for the platform to combat stealth accounts due to the nature of the business and its audience.
Users frequently create stealth accounts, especially if they actively sell products on eBay and run their business here as the platform can block an account for seemingly fabricated reasons without any explanations. This is how business owners secure themselves and their sales.
Why Are Stealth Accounts Necessary?
Firstly, Stealth accounts make it possible to enhance users’ security and privacy levels. As far as no one will know your real personal data, they won't be able to use it. Even if your account is hacked or your information is found somewhere in the darknet, you won’t have to be concerned about that.
Secondly, businesses gain the ability to diversify risks. The main principle is not to put all your eggs in one basket. Instead of having a single account, you can have multiple accounts on eBay at a time. If one gets blocked, that won’t be a problem as you will have 200 other accounts. Losing one account doesn't affect anything.
Thirdly, the more exposure a product gets, the more sales it's likely to generate. This is a fundamental rule of merchandising. An online storefront does not differ a lot from a traditional show window in an offline store. The more products you list on the same online platform, the more visibility you'll have. This will eventually result in more purchases.
Fourthly, you can bypass certain platform-imposed limitations using multiple accounts. For example, new sellers may be restricted from making sales that exceed $500 per month, while only up to 10 items (products) are allowed to be presented for sale.
Is It Hard to Create Multiple Stealth Accounts?
Creating a new eBay stealth account requires the following information:
- Name. You cannot simply generate a random name. It has to match the name of the PayPal account owner or the name on the bank card where payments will be transferred. You can use the names of individuals who agree to help you (friends, acquaintances, business partners, team members etc.). It's illegal to use stolen or purchased personal info.
- Email Address. For maximum anonymity, create a new email account with a popular email service like Gmail (eBay trusts it). This email can be used exclusively for eBay and nothing else.
- Phone Number. You don’t have to use your own phone number. To trade on eBay, you can register a new SIM card or use virtual number rental services like TextFree or Hushed (both services make it possible to obtain numbers in the USA).
- Address. You can use any mailing address - this info is not used to link accounts. Correspondingly, you can provide your real address, a friend's mailbox address, a partner's address etc. Mind, however, that you should have access to the provided place as returns or ordered items will be sent there.
- PayPal Account. Be cautious when providing PayPal account information as the PayPal account is initially used for customer identification. If the same PayPal account is linked to different eBay accounts, both of them could be banned from eBay. You can try alternative withdrawal methods or seek assistance from friends or partners instead of using PayPal. Some platforms also offer stealth PayPal accounts.
- IP Address. The safest situation is when one eBay account is associated with one IP address. If IP addresses match, it can lead to expected account suspension for violating multi-account rules. You can obtain new IP addresses through proxy server pools. VPN providers may not work well for this task as their IP addresses may already be blacklisted because of limited address space.
Why Use Proxies for eBay Stealth Accounts?
Just like many other large online marketplaces, eBay strongly disapproves of parasitic loads. Multi-accounts (Stealth accounts) belong to this category of violations as well.
Providers detect attempts to manipulate the system based on specific technical data like IP addresses, PayPal identifiers, bank card number, cookies etc.
Even if you have access to your friends' (partners') personal data, forging an IP address is significantly more complicated as it is automatically assigned to each user when they connect to the Internet. Just in case, you should find out more about the way internet service providers rotate IP addresses – this is what is known as dynamic IP.
Proxy servers and VPN networks make it possible to bypass IP restrictions. Since VPN providers use dedicated servers, their IPs are mostly static (they belong to hosting providers located in various locations). Such IPs are easier to trace and block.
The best solution is access to a large database of IP addresses of residential or mobile users. In other words, these are residential proxies or mobile proxies. When it comes to rotating proxy, IP addresses can be changed for each new session or request.
What’s more, you can emulate your location up to the specific city or state, if you correctly filter the IP criteria.
Remember, eBay operates not only in the USA. The platform also serves customers from more than 30 countries worldwide.
Keep in mind that you should not only focus on IP to effectively cover your tracks when creating an eBay Stealth Account. It's recommended to clear cookies, browser history and create a new digital fingerprint in general. You can use different environments launched in virtual machines, specialized browsers or other niche tools for these purposes.
Conclusion
Creating multiple eBay accounts registered under different data yet effectively controlled by one person (hidden or stealth accounts) is a superb way to bypass the platform's restrictions and reduce the risk of suspension.
Multi-accounts are not punishable and are not related to any unlawful actions if all operations are conducted with the consent of all the participants. However, if you steal or purchase personal data (including bank card and PayPal account info) without the owners' permission, this will become a punishable offense if proven.
Anyway, eBay doesn't appreciate when someone places an excessive load on its servers and, thus, tries to combat any possible deviations from the rules. It is possible to solve the problem of managing an account network by using rotating residential or mobile proxies. They make it possible to obtain IP addresses from virtually anywhere in the world.
Froxy is the best service to rent residential and mobile proxies. Our network comprises over 8 million IP addresses, covering more than 200 countries. Targeting accuracy goes up to city and internet service provider level. There is an affordable trial for direct testing.
