Auction site eBay has denied South African reports that a database of customer credit card numbers it maintains has been compromised by a Nigerian 419 syndicate.

According to News24, advanced free fraudsters "gained access to the credit card numbers... addresses and identity numbers of thousands of eBay clients and have started to distribute this to other syndicate members". The news service quotes Inspector Rian Visser of the SA police's commercial crimes unit to support its claims that local police have joined up with the "American Secret Security Service" (sic) to investigate attacks on eBay and an assault by the same gang against E-tronics, a US ISP.

"Visser said indications are that highly confidential details of about 400,000 people are involved in the two investigations," News24 reports. News24 is the only web site we could find reporting this “investigation” or the security breach at eBay that reportedly spawned it.

eBay has dismissed the report as "completely false". It wants to reassure users that their credit details remain safely out of the hands of the Lads from Lagos.

In a statement, eBay said: "We are receiving questions from users related to an article in the news alleging that a third party may have accessed credit card information from eBay's systems. These claims are completely false. Our credit card database has not been 'hacked', and no third party has accessed any eBay members’ credit card information through our systems. We will investigate the source of these allegations and take the appropriate action. At this point, we have not been contacted by any law enforcement authority regarding this rumour." ®

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