“Most people realise that by taking a few simple precautions, shopping online is safe. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for internet auctions,” wrote Madeline Bennett five years ago in these pages. Since then, have things improved?

In 2002, the “Cashmas” season was still, largely, high-street based. This time, it was much more online. Sadly, the change seems to have increased, rather than reduced, the level of wide-boy dodgy dealing that goes on.

It is still amazing to me that the Financial Services Authority appears to be impotent when it comes to regulating online payment systems like PayPal. My view of PayPal is no doubt distorted by the fact that I don’t have an account, so all I ever see about it is scam letters from fraudsters asking me to “re-validate” my account. But even so, the amount of fraud reported in the press makes it clear that if you want to buy legitimate goods from a reliable source, you have a simple choice: buy direct from the source, or be prepared to be ripped off.

This happened to a friend of mine recently. He unwittingly bought a pirate copy of Adobe Creative Suite on eBay, and despite the best efforts of myself and Adobe to bring the crooks to justice, they are still advertising on the auction site.

The old warning still applies, then: buyer beware.