eBay Exec. Boasts About Lack Of Users' Privacy

Vertically Integrated writes "The Register has an article about Joseph Sullivan, an eBay executive who has been bragging to 'an audience of law enforcement officials' about the auction site's disregard for the privacy of its users. How true this is is not known, but Sullivan is quoted in the article as saying: "When someone uses our site and clicks on the `I Agree' button, it is as if he agrees to let us submit all of his data to the legal authorities.""

Comments

Hmmm ...

[smoondog]

I'm not so sure. By selling something on the web through ebay, there is an implied lack of privacy between the parties making the transaction. You need to interact with the buyer, and careful buyers are not going to send money to a completely anonymous source (in the traditional way). As a buyer, I agree, being anonymous may be a nice feature. If you are a buyer and not anonymous, is that a feature or a bug? Either way, should law enforcement have access to the record of these transactions? They can already know that the transaction occurred, because that is public, they just don't know the participating parties. By not having the parties open, it puts a lot of trust into ebay and opens up for the possibility of abuses (by ebay). Personally, since the transactions are already public, I would consider the possibility of doing something counterintuitive, have every transaction be public (including the parties involved). It should then be up to the involved parties to go through an anonymous broker if they are concerned about their privacy. In this framework, ebay cannot commit abuses and the privacy concern rests with the (negotiable) relationship between the seller/buyer and the broker who provides anonynimity (sp?). Then ebay doesn't even need a privacy policy.

-Sean