How did someone know the position/tab of an item?

Someone messaged me to buy an item. Didn't think much of it, because it was a garbage lowball and the item in question had been sold already.

Then I realized that he had listed the stash tab name and position of the item - in a non public tab. As far as I'm aware, you can't get the tab name/position unless it's listed in a premium tab set to public. That's why poe.trade whisper messages don't list tab/pos for items listed via forums, only for items listed via public tabs/API. The tab in question was a quad tab, but hadn't been set to public in a while.

This was the message:

"

@From (removed): wtb Abberath's Hooves Goathide Boots in harbinger (stash "8"; left 21, top 20)
@From (removed): for 70c

So is there some way people are getting the contents of non-public tabs?

"

Abdiel_Kavash wrote:

"

but hadn't been set to public in a while.

Has it been set to public before? poe.trade sometimes remember items for sale even long after you remove them.

Yes, but I'm fairly certain it was changed to private before that item was put in it. I know it was changed to private at least 10 days ago, which would be quite a large lag even by poe.trade standards.

They might have their own API consumer and their last scan might have been when you had the item in there.

Ten days is nothing. Also some people copy paste poe.trade whispers in case the seller is offline. Now that both of you were online again, he whispered you, probably without checking poe.trade again.

The point isn't how long, it's that the item was never in the tab when the tab was public.

Same guy just messaged me about another item today. Said item, as far as I recall, was never in the tab while the tab was public.