posted on March 13, 2001 08:08:38 PM
From the Announcement Board:
QUOTE
Changes to Personal Information Request Feature
We at eBay are dedicated to providing a safe environment. Though we would like to maintain the "small town" feeling of our community, the reality is that we have over 22 million registered users that span across the world. As a growing global company, eBay must address the privacy concerns of both US members and those in other countries. In an ongoing effort to protect your privacy and comply with global privacy regulations, eBay will be limiting the manner in which members have access to the personal contact information of other members. This will involve changing the "Contact (Personal) Information Request" feature on eBay.
Many eBay members are not aware of the open access to their personal contact information on the site. This contact information includes a member's name, city, state, and telephone number.
Prior to today, a member was able to request another member's contact information at any time. This has changed so that access to contact information will be limited to bidders and sellers who are involved in a transaction. Specifically, in an active listing, the seller and bidder(s) will be able to request each other's contact information. In a closed listing, the winning bidder(s) and seller will be able to request each other's contact information. As with the prior version of the feature, when contact information is requested, both the requestor and the member receive an email notification with both members' contact information included.
Please be aware that the changes to the Personal Information Request feature may not be fully functional until the feature changes have been completely released to the site within the next few days. In addition, these changes will initially apply to the U.S. site. They will follow in upcoming months on our international sites. Due to national privacy laws, some international sites will have more stringent requirements than the U.S. site.*
Sincerely,
eBay
*For German and Austrian members, requests for contact (personal) information will be permitted ONLY between the seller and winning bidders in successful, closed items.
END QUOTE
posted on March 13, 2001 09:08:06 PM
A step in the right direction, but as long as eBay allows bid retractions, all someone has to do is bid on your item to become an "active bidder", get your contact info, and withdraw the bid.
posted on March 13, 2001 09:10:10 PM
Hey guys, do you know what I find amazing? The fact that there aren't any complaints yet. For once I can't find anything wrong with an eBay policy change. It must be the water.
posted on March 14, 2001 07:39:01 AM
This is a good change. I once had a person request my information just so he could see who else was bidding on the items he collected. It was very unsettling.
posted on March 14, 2001 07:47:33 AM
There was no reason for this information to have been so accessible, so this is definitely a good thing, without the partial drawbacks like with the contact form -- and they even kept the aspect that if one side requests the information, that the other party is made aware of this request.
As far as the bid retraction part, maybe eBay would put in something to check for cases of retractions following info reqs. (Or even more "funny" -- well maybe not -- would be to disallow retractions after a request has been made; of course, that probably would only cause deadbeating or some other further odd behavior. )
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What's being done in the name of direct marketing nowadays is crazy.
The above are all just my opinions, except where I cite facts as such.
Oh, I am not dc9a320 anywhere except AW. Any others are not me.
Is eBay is changing from a world bazaar into a bizarre world?
For once I can't find anything wrong with an eBay policy change. It must be the water. 