Help File

Since Late 2008 American, British, and German eBay have displayed the winner's login name in code.

This program gives a translation of some of the codes to login names using data from
ebay.com, ebay.co.uk and ebay.de.

The information that can be obtained from a winning auction is:

(a) The auction identification number (now a 12-digit number)

(b) The code name of the winner

(c) The login name of the seller


Eventually a seller provides feedback for this auction.

The information that can be obtained from the seller's feedback is:

(a) The auction identification number

(b) The login name of the winner

This program, therefore, uses the auction identification of the winner with the auction 
identification provided by the seller to corrrelate code names with login names.

A search may be made for all or any part of a login name or code name.


Output of code names and login names is given with the codes in alphabetical order.

The latest feedback count is also given to attempt to differentiate users with
the same code names (see below).

It should be realised that eBay converts login names to a UNIQUE 5 character identifier.

However, only the first and last digits are displayed; the middle 3 characters are displayed as '*'.

Assuming that ebay is using only the characters a-z, 0-9, plus a few specials in their display then 
there are only approximately 2,000 combinations possible. eBay has millions of bidders so that 
any displayed codename e.g. a***a will be associated with thousands of bidders.

Thus: "deniserose"  may be coded by ebay as "e123e" (but we will never know), and "arcaze" may be 
coded as "e456e" (and again we will never know).  Both of these will appear as "e***e". 
There will be several thousand other bidders each with the displayed codename e***e.


As from February 2009 many ebays are changing the code names of their users.

These duplicate login names may be observed by ticking the "Duplicate Code Name" box.  In this
case the String Field is ignored and the current known list of duplicate names is displayed.

The feedback count for these names is also shown and where different may be used to determine
which is the later code name.

As from July 2010 British ebay have brought their system into line with American and German
ebay and have therefore been included into this operation.

There is a gap in collection of data from Oct 2010 - Dec 2010.