being the innocent and unwitting party. On the other hand, e-fencing may describe transactions in which there is direct interaction between the original thief and the final purchaser. In a typical case, the "intermediary" is an online platform. In e-fencing (unlike traditional fencing) the level of culpability on the part of the "intermediary" platform varies greatly. On one hand, the platform's operators may be knowingly or recklessly permitting such activity (for instance in a darknet market) and thus might be thought of as a "fence" in a more traditional sense. At the other extreme are "intermediaries" that are legitimate and respected platforms being used in defiance of their terms and conditions and in spite of aggressive and ongoing actions to interdict such illegal activities. E-fencing can be mixed with sales to pawnbrokers. The auction website eBay, being easy to reach for the average thief, is a popular location for e-fencing; customers reported more than eight thousand crimes from the website in 2008, many of which involved the sale of stolen property. Classified websites like Craigslist, AutoTrader.com, Pennysaver online, etc. are used for fencing goods online and circumventing the middleman fencer, as are a number of illegal darknet markets. E-fenced items may have been shoplifted or otherwise stolen, or they may have been purchased with stolen credit cards or similar banking information. The latter practice is often intertwined with carding, which is the trafficking of stolen credit card numbers en masse. The sale of stolen credit cards, which usually takes place on the darknet markets, is a form of e-fencing in its own right, and plays a role in purchasing physical goods that may be either e-fenced themselves or fenced through more traditional means. Crime rings steal and/or use stolen financial information to pay for in-demand items from retailers and then sell those items online, relying on the Internet's ability to reach buyers around the world and its anonymity; some theft rings even take pre-orders, confident that they can steal and/or fraudulently pay for whatever is currently in demand. In the United States, major retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target have advocated for federal legislation to combat Internet fencing. Some such proposed legislation would require major sales websites (e.g. eBay and Amazon.com) to retain some items' serial numbers and to release information to retailers about major sellers whom the retailers believe to be relying on stolen property. Such proposals have been