[whoknowswhat11]

This happens for a few reasons.

1) Inactive or low activity account starts selling (instead of buying) high value / high risk items. Think GPU's, Macbooks, etc.

2) An old account has activity (including someone trying passwords from various breaches some of which might match an old salt). Because old account takeover and then fraudulent sales is a pretty big issue (old accounts often have 100% positive ratings) this seems to trigger the bots.

3) Accounts without KYC - normally you are asked to update.

I'm not sure how old accounts have to be to have problems. I'm from early 1999 which was three or four years after I think they got going.

The fraud problem was getting pretty ridiculous on ebay so kind of glad they are cracking down but it's got to be a pretty imperfect hammer and so no doubt lots of false positives.

I've gone to selling my old iphones / ipads etc back through apple. No where near the price you get elsewhere, but no hassle either from my experience.

[patio11]

This comports with my general understanding of the matter. By total coincidence, I just wrote a newsletter on this topic (like, minutes ago), and it includes a description of triangular fraud, which is particularly relevant for e.g. sales of desirable, fungible, high-ticket electronics via online platforms from accounts which don't have a long history of being electronics retailers.

https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/the-fraud-supply-chain/