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[quote="mario"]So here is what happened yesterday and today. In a nutshell, eBay is over time making more difficult for sniping services to operate by developing various models that analyze user browser footprint, location and behaviour, and block users from bidding in various ways.

The most common block is employing CAPTCHA, or "Verification code" to verify that users submitting bids are actual human beings, and not automated robots. Gixen is obviously an automated tool that employs web scraping, and cannot pass these blocks, despite not displaying any malicious behaviour. I still do not believe that these blocks are directed against sniping services, but that sniping services are merely a collateral damage in ebay's fight against fraudsters.

Now, what triggers these blocks to happen is not entirely clear, and only eBay knows the exact behaviour that caused it. So far, my best guess is that it's a combination of one or more of the following: pattern of previous behaviour, which is account specific, home location of users and where they used ebay previously from, and volume of bids being sent from a single IP address.

What you can do about it: Doing the text or phone verification by using Gixen's proxy is one of the things that associate your account with Gixen's IP address, making it far less likely Gixen will fail placing your snipe. Having a mirror subscription also helps - for whatever reason mirror server was so far not affected by this problem at all.

What I can do about it: various things to support you - including making Gixen proxy available, and renting additional servers to better distribute the load and make volume less of an issue. The latter is in progress already.

I am also considering making additional software changes, e.g. supporting placing snipes from Gixen's servers through a proxy server that could run on your desktop. I am concerned, however, that this may present a difficulty for average user to install.

Another option, also, is making a standalone Gixen sniper that would run from your desktop. This, however, may take some time to develop.

Please let me know if you have any question.[/quote]

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