01 STEALTH MASTER 02 BEFORE YOU START READING First of all we wanted to truly thank you for placing your order! Means a lot to us. Good news are - this book is exactly as advertised. It will keep its promise of providing all the knowl- edge you need to create multiple Etsy stealth accounts. This guide is written using a very simple conversational English, making it easy for anyone to under- stand and learn the secrets of stealth accounts. Some technical details are explained just to provide you a general understanding and we encourage you to check the free resources on the web (reddit, forums, blogs) to gain some deeper insights if there’s something you want to dig deeper in. After reading this ebook, you’ll be able to connect all the dots completely and understand what is needed to create accounts successfully, legally and at scale. 03 We are a team of e-commerce and operational security specialists, managing 40+ our own Etsy stores at this moment and been doing that consistently for the past 2+ years. Etsy isn’t the only venue we currently sell in, but this marketplace alone grosses between 3 and 4 million dollars of revenue for our company every year. We sell a high variety of items, starting with clothing, ending with craft supplies, digital items, pet products and custom home decor accessories. Similarly like you, we are selling items and at some point got suspended without any proper explana- tion. Back in 2018, selling on Etsy was our main source of income, and we could not afford firing our employees, cancelling office and warehouse and get into debt with our suppliers. We took a fight and decided to figure out a way to continue selling and were successful in winning it. Instead of selling on just a one account, we now do that with 40+ and whenever account gets suspended - we make new ones. Suspensions are a very common thing nowadays. Account can be shut down completely by mistake and never reinstated back. Ask yourself: who they are to prevent you from selling and profiting from your hard work? You are the one to dictate the rules there, not some marketplace algorithm and bots suspending accounts without even looking at them and impacting thousands of sellers, their employ- ees and their families worldwide. You might be selling high risk items, and that’s up to you completely. No matter what you sell, in the end of the day you are putting your work, efforts, time, taking risks, paying suppliers and possibly employees. The algorithm will not decide whether you can continue selling on Etsy and profit from your work. You will learn how to make new stealth accounts and will continue on. Dealing with thousands of suspended accounts in the past, we’ve seen it all. You were suspended without any email notice, and can’t even sign in into your account anymore? Won- dering what will happen to your funds, since you can’t even login? You received a letter that your items are against "house rules" but tens of your competitors are selling exactly the same? OUR STORY (short version) 04 You just created an account and it got suspended after 10 minutes. You messaged support and they responded after 3 weeks that account was "comprehensively" reviewed and then shut down. One of your accounts got suspended, and the other 2 accounts you had were shut down without any notices also? You already got 4 intellectual property complaints and now Etsy informed its your last one? Should you resume selling? Should you create new account? Will they be linked? You always manage to create accounts successfully but for some unknown reason all of them are always getting suspended after first 5-10 sales? You are selling print on demand products, just connected printify and account got shut down the next day? Was there something wrong with your setup? You were successfully creating accounts up until April of 2021 when the PayPal was removed from Etsy, and now can’t figure out a way? There secrets that marketplace security algorithms use against your stealth accounts to figure out what’s going on. And we will teach you how this algorithm works and how you can master it to your advantage. So let’s begin. 05 WHY YOU MUST MASTER ETSY STEALTH? Its extremely fast growing platform. https://blog.etsy.com/news/2021/our-commitment-to-the-trust-and-safety-of-the-etsy-marketplace/ While the retail e-commerce sector is continuing to grow and is forecasted to expand by additional 16% in the US by the end of 2022, Etsy’s growth is something close to outstanding. Company’s revenue increased by more than in 100% compared 2020 to 2019 (from 819 million to 1.7 billion). Etsy earns from transactions and sellers mostly, meaning this 100%+ increase in revenue is caused by enormous increase in new customers and order volume. You must always diversify. Having ATLEAST 2 additional backup accounts is a must. Etsy has introduced a new security algorithm in 2021 and increasing its security teams: Link to their own article making you more vulnerable than ever. The chances are increasing that your main account can get suspended (sometimes without any reason) simply because they are testing new security algorithms and bots. You must always maintain at least few of the accounts to keep your business, future and income protected. Test more and dominate With multiple accounts and correct strategy you can take over the first page from your competitors. You can test different listing strategies, photos, optimizations with having multiple accounts. Also multiple seller accounts enables you to list new products you want to test with no risk to your main account. 06 LET'S BEGIN. What is needed to successfully create stealth account? Summary of all aspects you need to create your new stealth account a) New identity b) Operational setup (how to configure your laptop, what plugins, extensions and software to use, how to make sure you can operate multiple accounts on one laptop). c) Correct IP solution d) New or altered listings (photos, titles, etc) e) New phone number or google authenticator f) New bank account g) New credit card Understanding Etsy's security algorithm Etsy marketplace has specific internal security measures, assigning risk and fraud scores to each of the newly created account. There is certain things in your account creation methods, information used, account patterns that will make or break your attempts to create a stealth account. By making sure you tick all the boxes, you maximize your account creation success which can reach 50-80% of success rate once implemented correctly. Without knowing and implementing these aspects, your chances are close to 0 in 2022, or having 1 out of 100 attempts to survive on a good day. 07 What they are looking for: 1) Where is the IP of this user coming from? Who is the internet provider? Is it a VPN? A proxy? A residential proxy? A mobile hotstpot? - Score is assigned based on the answers 2) What is the country of account? Is it from one of high-risk countries? - Score is assigned based on the answers 3) Browser fingerprints. What are the languages, timezone, browser, operating system? Is it consistent with the account information? - Score is assigned based on the answers 4) First item which is uploaded. Is it unique or taken from google? Is it made with photoshop or a real picture taken by device? - Score is assigned based on the answers 5) Is the phone used a real one? Or a random incorrect number? Is it online VOIP number o a number coming from a real sim card? - Score is assigned based on the answers 6) Credit card used. Where is it based from? What is the issuing bank? Is it credit/debit? Prepaid or not prepaid? Is it a gift card? 7) Bank number used. Is it a real bank number? Is in virtual bank account? Is it coming from risky low tier banks? Good news is that all of these aspects can be obtained legally, safely and without any hassle. You will learn what are the options of getting new identity, how to setup your laptop for multiple accounts, how to make sure your listings are edited correctly to avoid linking between accounts, what phone numbers you can use, how to get multiple bank accounts legally and how to use virtual credit cards which are accepted. 08 Getting new identity There are different options depending on the country of your Etsy account you want to create. Since there are operational differences between countries and regions, we will breakdown each country and region separately. For US For European Union/Euro currency zone countries For UK For Canada For Australia Non Etsy payments country list Few important aspects to understand when selecting Etsy country for your business. 1) It technically does not matter what country Etsy account is registered with. You can adjust your shop location, items location, shipping settings to whatever country or region you want to. We have tested this with 30+ our own accounts where on none of them the registration country and shop location matches. Etsy does not have local domains unlike eBay or Amazon, therefore it does not matter where your shop is based from. 2) You can be a US person and sell on Etsy verified with EU information. In case you want to avoid the hassle of obtaining SSN, EIN, forming LLC’s, you can create your stealth account using European/Cana- dian/Australian (any other country enrolled in Etsy payments) and select that your BANK COUNTRY is based in US. In this scenario you are getting an option to still use your legit US banks, and avoid taxation hassle during Etsy registration. (It does not mean that you don’t need to pay taxes, as deposits are still hitting your bank account). Going on, we will expand on the different account creation methods for different countries and regions. 09 Starting 2022, during registration a full number of Social Security Number is requested, which is then crosschecked with IRS and other internal records for fraud prevention and marketplace security. We do not suggest obtaining this data from darknet marketplaces, as from 2022 IRS monitors taxes of online sellers more strictly, sending 1099-K tax forms for the ones crossing $600 revenue market. Mean- ing with stolen identity, there is a real person behind who will receive the tax form. But there are ways around that. How to get new identity information for US Etsy account? Option 1: You need to ask a permission/consent of the person you are in touch with to use his details for opening an account initially. a) For US residents. 10 Option 2: As explained in the paragraph above (darknet), but we do not recommend this option. Option 3. Stealth method. Going with random (made up) identity information (name, surname, SSN, address) and uploading your identity documents to confirm identity during registration. Put your real EIN info once tax threshold reaches, since made up full SSN seems to be rejected later on even if sub- mitting the required documents. Stealth method still works in 2022, but with noticeably decreased account survival rates. You can expect around 1/10 of accounts to survive this way. On a larger scale it can be around 5-15 survived accounts out of 100 made. Since made-up information does not match to any real records once Adyen cross- checks it, your account is assigned with a higher risk score. You are then required to upload verification documents (passport/id/license) Then it comes down to luck and how close to reality your profile actu- ally is. Do not expect extremely random names to pass like: Donald Duck or Tony Montana. Try to get creative and think of a way to create your identity profile as realistic as possible. After successfully creating your account and getting first sales your options are the following: 1) To pay the taxes for the person under which information account is held 2) To open an LLC and add your EIN information and fully own the account and control its tax process (recommended approach). LLC and EIN: How it works? LLC can be opened easily online and it will provide you with an EIN number. Open submitting your tax payer information you will be able to put LLC as a name of the business and EIN as a taxpayer’s code. That’s the two details you need. Why it works? During information validation process, Etsy sends automatic request to IRS to match the EIN information with taxpayers name which is LLC name in your case. As both of them are fully legit and with matching details - it passes. The director, owner or shareholder is not being checked, only the EIN and LLC names. This is your way to having a multiple accounts in a legal way. 11 This zone is less complicated than the US, since there is no $600 sales threshold after which taxes must be reported and collected automatically. Therefore it opens some more options to operate your account. Option1: Getting confirmation to use your close friends/relatives information. For option 1 you will need: 1) Their agreement/consent 2) Their exact date of birth 3) Their exact address 4) Depending on the country, their personal code (most EU countries do not require that) Option2: Using made up information to open your account (stealth method) In the EU you have an option to use a legal way to create a stealth account using non-existent personal details. Does it still work on 2022? Short answer is - Yes it does. And it will until verification algorithm will not change. Why it still works? After account information is submitted, Adyen and other 3rd party non-disclosed operators aggregate account data and crosscheck it with different both internal and public records of that country, such as: • Credit reports • Tax authorities • Public databases • Social profiles b) For European Union/ Euro currency zone countries 12 When using non-existent details for the account, you will get an error in most cases that there was a trouble verifying that information. Force the submit button 3 times in a row and you will be prompted to upload the document of the account holder which you will have created before. Because of European user data privacy laws, different country legal systems, credit check restrictions and the fact that its a union of different countries - Etsy algorithm can never 100% be sure whether the details are correct or not, and will have a room for error and mismatches. The less digitalized the coun- try is - the more chances to pass the verification. Your best options can be: • Italy • France • Spain • Portugal • Poland • Croatia c) For UK accounts There is a similar option as for European based accounts (Option 1 and Option 2) . There is also an Option 3. Disclaimer: We do not recommend doing this, just explaining the possible options. Option 3. You can search the public databases for company directors or any similar information and try to recreate the account details using the publicly available information. You will still need to produce the identity document for verification but it can help you to create a more realistic profile of your seller account. d) For Canadian/Australian based accounts Follow the same procedures as explained in UK/EU section. 13 e) For non payment account countries. As of April 2021, Paypal was removed from payment options so if your country is not included in Etsy payment country list, you will not be able to create your shop. But the good news are - you can learn how to do that in our book. You need to follow identity steps as explained in the previous sections and after that you will learn how you can easily get your USD/GBP/EUR bank accounts and everything else needed for successful account creation. This chapter will cover everything you need to know about producing your identity documents. First of all, you don’t need to be a photoshop guru to succeed in this area and produce the documents that will get accepted. Secondly, "creative" documents are still accepted by marketplace algorithms (if done correctly). It is still a very effective method to verify accounts where only the scanned/photo versions of documents are accepted. The good news is - that’s still how most of the marketplaces verify their seller accounts. Becoming a master of stealth documents consists of these elements: 1) For starters - Adobe Photoshop software 2) The right templates 3) The data which you put on the documents 4) Altering the document’s metadata to make it look legit We will not go into details about downloading Adobe Photoshop; that process is self-explanatory (just get the torrent), but instead talk about the right templates. Producing documents for Stealth accounts 14 The right templates 1) To make creative passports, ID cards, licenses, utility bills, statements, etc. - you need the right tem- plates for that. By templates, we mean .psd files that you can easily alter and put the data you want to. One of the leading websites to download these templates (can be paid via BTC for anonymity) is: https://gotempl.com There you will find a vast majority of country passport templates, bills, bank statements, literally every- thing you might need to produce accounts. You can also search in google for PSD passport templates will and find dozens of sites selling them. 2) Second important part of the templates are: layers. You do not want your passport scan to appear without the background or in plain white. You want it to look as realistic as possible, same as with real scanned documents: there are areas which are more dark than others, areas with glare, small dirt, etc. The templates you use must have the background effects of a scan. You can always ask for the template seller whether that’s included into .psd file (usually they do include that, as additional PSD layers). Or you can download them separately from other sources. The data which you put on the documents 1) For the identity documents the numbers, codes, etc. is the set of data called MRZ (machine readable zone) data. For example, passport numbers have a certain sequence and length - therefore you can’t just put random numbers into it. Now that you know how this set of data (MRZ) is called, you can find online sources to generate what you need for the documents. For example if you want to produce UK passport, this is the source that will help you to generate the right MRZ: https://emvlab.org/mrz/ 2) Secondly, there is name, surname, DOB. As always, you want your stealth profile to look as realistic as possible, therefore you don’t want to name your stealth identity as Donald Duck or similar. In the past chapter, we’ve explained your options to obtain this data, so we’re confident that you will get some ideas what to do in this case. 15 Altering document's metadata to make it look legit 1) Exporting your document from .PSD to PDF straightforwardly will leave photoshop fingerprints all over the file and your documents will be easily detected as fake. If you check Properties/Get info section of your file after exporting it from .PSD to PDF you’ll notice that the "content creator" section of the file is Adobe Photoshop. That’s the immediate red flag which will tell the algorithm that this document is fake. And that’s the last thing you want if your goal is to succeed. What you need to do is alter the EXIF data on your file. Real, scanned documents will never have their metadata associated with Adobe Photoshop, but with a printer it was scanned with. Its specific color profile, device code, device name, etc. Using this tool you can alter all of these aspects in your files after finishing the photoshop part. One of the tools you can use: https://exiftool.org 2) With correctly applying EXIF data to your files, you will ensure that your metadata looks legit and coming as a real scan or photo. 3) When making the statements, utility bills, etc - it’s possible to skip this step. Simply PRINT&SCAN your new creative document and it will get its EXIF data naturally and will look more real as well. This is literally everything you need to know about producing documents. If you master these variables in your document making process - it’s all you need to start making stealth accounts nonstop. This tutorial is not a step-by-step guide to make your stealth documents. One of the reasons - it’s against the forum’s guidelines to engage in fake documents and similar things from this area. All you need is a day or two of practicing and getting to know the subtle aspects of Photoshop and you will be able to make anything you need in your sleep. With this chapter, we’ve saved you a tens of hours (at least) by giving you all the variables and specifics you need to be aware of. You’ll find it easily when you know exactly what to search for. 16 Operational setup There are different ways how you can manage your multiple existing stealth accounts and create new ones. We will explain the core main aspects of operational setup, what marketplaces actually track and look for and how you can alter that to your advantage. To sum up, these are your options to manage multiple stealth accounts or create new ones: 1) Different user accounts on windows laptop 2) Different users on macbook laptop 3) Remote desktop protocol (RDP) 4) Using virtual machines with Oracle VMware 5) Antidetect browsers 6) Firefox portable browsers on the same user account 7) Using VPS - virtual port server 8) New laptop for each account 9) Different Chrome/Firefox browser profiles for each account Before we give you a concise explanation of each option, its important to understand the main factors how accounts can get linked and suspended. 17 1) Cookies Cookies are small blocks of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user’s computer or other device by the user’s web browser. Cookies are placed on the device used to access a website, and more than one cookie may be placed on a user’s device during a session. "value": "73091649.630089682.1565171499.1565171499.1565171499.1", In the example above, the unique cookie "value" string was injected into the users browser and its asso- ciated with this unique account only. Meaning if you previously had an account XXX@gmail.com on eBay, associated with this string of cookie value, creating new account without cleaning your browser from this cookie value first will very likely link those 2 accounts and result in suspension. The most important part is to have a fresh browser history which is new or without any links to the previ- ously managed account. There are just a few ways how you can easily get a new browsing history: New laptop will give you a fresh browser Uninstalling and reinstalling your browser will give you a fresh browser Cleaning your browser from all browsing history, passwords, cache, cookies will give you a fresh browser also Using firefox if chrome was used before will give you a fresh browsing history Using free version of CCleaner and wiping out your history, cookies, etc. will give you a fresh browser Be aware that google chrome has an option for different browser profiles with individual browsing history assigned to each user. If you accidentally sync previously suspended account’s browsing history to a new user, you can be also linked and suspended. Most reliable way to clean your previous cookies and completely wipe out your browser of any aspect that might link you with previously suspended account is using the program: CCleaner. Free version will be sufficient to achieve completely new browser profile. That makes sense considering you only want to manage 1 account on the same laptop and user as you previously did. Browser fingerprinting is a powerful method that websites use to collect information about your brows- er type and version, as well as your operating system, active plugins, time zone, language, screen reso- lution and various other active settings. Main aspects tracked by eBay while fingerprinting your browser are: The ways how being linked by cookies can be avoided: 2) Browser fingerprint 18 19 a) User agent. A user agent is a “string” – that is, a line of text – identifying the browser and operating system to the web server. The contents of the user agent field vary from browser to browser. Each browser has its own, distinctive user agent. Essentially, a user agent is a way for a browser to say “Hi, I’m Mozilla Firefox on Windows” or “Hi, I’m Safari on an iPhone” to a web server. These are the options how you can differentiate your multiple accounts as much as possible with minimal efforts. For generating new versions of your browser/operating system for each account - this extension does the perfect job and was tested by creating hundreds of accounts without being linked together and being suspended. Available for both firefox and chrome browsers. This plugin gives you tens of different browser strings to choose from, enabling you to use different browser string for each stealth account. BROWSER Headers: JavaScript: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/100.0.4896.60 Safari/537.36 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/100.0.4896.60 Safari/537.36 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; win64; x64) ApplewebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/99.0.4844.84 Safari/537.36 RuxitSynthetic/1.0 v7027719053848187403 tll30491875682666471 athlfb31b7a altpriv cvcv=2 smf=0 How to spoof your user agent? 20 Operational system can be also spoofed using this plugin. It is however less accurate in cases when your operating system is Mac OS and you’re trying to appear as windows user. In cases where your home operating system is Windows, it does the good job providing different values each time. You should always aim to pick the most popular browser and operating system combinations to avoid being "sin- gled out" and possibly flagged. Making your browser to appear as windows XP user using Opera browser, definitely will make your profile look "odd" and possibly flag as a high-risk. You should always blend into the crowd and combine most popular browser - operating system combos. Windows 10, 8 and 7 with Firefox/Chrome browsers. Continuing to browser fingerprinting topic, these are the remaining aspects marketplaces track to identify you. Languages - your browser languages can be detected and fingerprinted. Your options are to install different language combinations on your different browsers used to manage accounts. For example: Account1 has US and US (British) versions installed. Account2 has US and ES (Spanish) installed. Account3 has US only. Pick the popular languages that would make sense depending on the account country you are operating from. For example adding African languages to your account and operating account from Germany might raise suspicion for the algorithm and assume you are actually operating account from Africa and possibly trying to fraud the platform. Timezone - your timezone is matched with the one of your IP. GeoIP - Timezone match is important aspect, which may flag the account if those two are mismatching. If your IP location is showing US but timezone is Indian, you either travelled recently and did not adjust your computers timezone or are using VPN/Proxy to connect and the later one is more likely. Make sure your device timezone and loca- tion is matching the one of your IP location. There are VPN’s/Residential proxies that does that automati- cally for you, other options being adjusting that on your computer manually.