Fake Nvidia RTX 3090s selling on eBay designed to trap bots

eBay has for many years now been the auction site used by scalpers to sell jacked-up computer accessories and components like Nvidia’s TRX 3000 graphics cards. However, current trends show that consumers are now using the auction site to fight back. 

If you perform a search on eBay using the keyword Nvidia RTX 3080 or 3090, you’ll be presented with a long list of GPUs selling for exorbitant prices, even though among the list you’ll find some that come at a bargain. And that’s what you should be worried about, no matter how good and tempting the deal is, we urge you to never buy them and we will tell you why shortly. 

If you take some time to read the product description all the way down, you’ll notice that you aren’t bidding for the actual product, instead, what you’re bidding for is an A4 image of the graphics card. The description like this one usually advises humans to keep off, stating that the listing is intended to trap bots.

The main goal of this malicious listing is to trick bots or people into bidding for something worthless, so they are easy to fall for. Now the big question is, what can you do to avoid been conned?

Well, we will urge you to diligently read the name of the product and follow the description all the way through. And that’s because the scammers pulling this off usually write somewhere in the description that you’re buying an image or a fake product. 

Because the description is hidden off the screen, if you don’t check properly, you may not notice and end up with a fake product. And when you initiate a refund, they will claim that you were informed that you weren’t buying an actual graphics card. 

Another thing you want to be wary of is any deal that looks too good to be true. While you can get somewhat lucky with a nice deal on these auction sites, you can also fall victim to malicious scams that will cost you several thousand or hundreds of dollars.