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Ebay's Flexible Privacy Policy
l2718 writes "Ha'aretz has a disquieting report on a presentation made by eBay's senior counsel to law-enforcement officials. Apparently eBay logs all user interaction with them, and will happily hand over all the information to any law-enforcement official without a warrant -- a fax is quite sufficient. He is actually proud of their 'flexible' privacy policy."
If you have ever been ripped off or defrauded on ebay, you would look at this from a different perspective.
The last thing I want to do when someone defrauds me using ebay is jump through the many legal hoops to obtain a warrant.
As stated, this information can only be requested by law enforcement, and trust me, law enforcement officials don't get off of from violating your privacy and requesting it just for kicks. This is a welcome move that will help people that got screwed recover their money a little easier and a little faster. I, and many other ebayers, welcome the policy.
Witold
www.witold.org
witold.org
I work for a banking service provider (one of the guys who run the banking software for the little 1-50 branch banks). A few years ago we used to get excited because the Secret Service or FBI wanted us to pull some records. These days we almost need a full time person to track this stuff down. This week we got a call from a homicide detective in Columbus, OH. (Is that really a city?) The detail we can provide these guys is pretty complete - even if it's just a lame web banking hack attempt, we can often link that attempt back to a specific ISP user (because the ISP often attaches additional information to web requests - ahem, AOL) as well as tell ever single transaction that account, that IP, that user has done since XXX. And what does it take for people to get the information? At first we only trusted agents with ID at the door, but it really is getting to the point of a phone call and a fax; in fact, the best way to social engineer these days might just be to pretend you're a cop - the person on the other end of the phone (at least at my place) will generally roll over and cough up whatever you want by the second phone call. Fortunately, some management types have started to pay attention to the hack opportunity provided and are beginning to educate the first-line responders to these kind of calls that just because they say they are cops, doesn't mean they really are....