eBay Compliance Failures Exposed As Illegal Weapons Listings Lead To French Regulatory Inquiry
eBay is once again under investigation for the sale of illegal goods as French authorities flag weapons being sold through the platform.
The investigation began in mid-November, according to reporting from Le Parisien, and is part of of a wider crackdown which also included Shein, AliExpress, Temu, and Wish.
A new website is under investigation. The American online sales platform eBay is the subject of an inquiry after being flagged by the government for selling illegal products , marking the fifth such case following those targeting Shein , AliExpress, Temu, and Wish, the Paris prosecutor's office announced on Tuesday.
In mid-November, following the outbreak of the Shein scandal, Commerce Minister Serge Papin announced in our pages that new online sales platforms had been reported to the authorities, including five (AliExpress, Joom, eBay, Temu, and Wish) for selling illegal products.
Regarding eBay, the minister indicated that, as with Wish, Temu, and AliExpress, sales of "category A weapons, such as brass knuckles and machetes" had been detected.
The prosecutor's office opened the investigation after consumer watchdog Directorate General for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) found illicit goods on eBay and other ecommerce marketplaces.
The company has faced increasing scrutiny in recent years over the sale of illegal, counterfeit and/or prohibited goods with legal and regulatory action aimed at holding them accountable for items sold by third parties on their platform.
In 2024, the US Drug Enforcement Agency sued eBay over the sale of illegal pill presses and other drug paraphernalia on the site, extracting an historic $59M settlement from the company, which did not admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
Liz Morton
A similar lawsuit was brought by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 2023 seeking to hold eBay liable for the sale of restricted chemicals, prohibited pesticides, and illegal emissions control defeat devices sold on the platform.
But eBay refused to settle that case, ultimately prevailing with their Section 230-based defense getting the lawsuit dismissed - a ruling the Department of Justice initially intended to fight before dropping their appeal in April 2025.
Liz Morton
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 states:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Unfortunately, the current legal and regulatory framework in the US has so far allowed companies like eBay to avoid accountability for illegal activity on their sites, using Section 230 as a "get out of liability free" card - and eBay is fighting hard to keep that protection.
Liz Morton
But while that may work for the time being to avoid liability in the US, eBay may have a tougher time in Europe where consumer protection laws and regulations are typically more strictly enforced, even for marketplaces which primarily offer items from 3rd party sellers.
eBay says it is continuing "to work tirelessly to prevent the sale of prohibited items on its platform" and was "cooperating" with "French regulatory authorities on this matter", but it remains to be seen if that will be enough to avoid being summoned to appear before the Paris judicial court.
