eBay shares fall alongside PayPal boycott

eBay's share price dropped over 2.5 percent at the beginning of Nasdaq trading on Wednesday.

The Anonymous hacker group claimed that a flash-mob boycott of PayPal caused the drop in PayPal owner eBay's share price, a claim that was disputed by financial analysts.

Twitter accounts linked with Anonymous claimed an eBay Nasdaq stock devaluation of over 2.5 percent on Wednesday was caused by a campaign for people to close PayPal accounts.

However, Evercore financial analyst Ken Sena told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that the Anonymous action was unlikely to have had much of an effect on investors. Sena instead attributed the fall to strong results posted by Amazon on Tuesday.

"eBay shares are suffering from Amazon posting really strong results," said Sena. "I don't see this [Anonymous action] as a big driver."

Anonymous called for a boycott of PayPal services on Wednesday in reaction to FBI arrests of people allegedly affiliated with Anonymous. The arrests were in connection to a distributed denial of service attack on PayPal, which was launched after PayPal declined to process further donations for the Wikileaks whistleblower site in 2010.

PayPal on Wednesday declined to give any numbers of people who had taken part in the boycott, and said it continued to block Wikileaks.

"PayPal works with law enforcement around the world to protect our customers and their accounts," the company said in a statement. "As we state in our privacy policy, PayPal works with law enforcement or government officials if we receive a subpoena or court order; if we need to do so to comply with law; or if we believe in good faith that illegal activity has occurred."