eBay Revises, Explains Its Privacy Policy

Prof. Jonathan Ezor, Touro Institute for Business, writes "eBay has just announced it will change its privacy policy, and has posted a summary of its changes. Good discussion of how and why they provide information to internal service providers, a point missed by many privacy policies."

What if I do not agree with the change?

[jsse]

A. If you do not wish to accept the revised Privacy Policy once it is effective (on May 25, 2003), you may cancel your eBay registration by emailing [e-mail]

Wrong. Post it on /. and have the angry mob ambush the bastard.

what else does it say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please be aware that while we have summarized the major changes below, there are additional changes that are not summarized and therefore, you are encouraged to read the Privacy Policy at http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/png-priv.htm l to see the complete revision.

I don't know about you folks, but whenever an agreement is changed, I get a little scared. What did they hide and bury in there?

And note that the whole agreement was changed, not just the privacy policy.

Has anybody actually *read* the

Re:what else does it say?

[evronm]

I don't know about you folks, but whenever an agreement is changed, I get a little scared. What did they hide and bury in there?

Me too. However, when a full month is given to accept/decline the changes, along with (really easy) instruction on declining, I tend to relax a little.

Has anybody actually *read* the policy?

No! And I'll tell you why I didn't: IANAL, and as such, I can't understand it in any way that is actually pertinent to litigation.

We live in a state that is owned an run by lawyers.

Re:what else does it say?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Not only that, but they put a description of the changes (in plain English) in FAQs, which the email linked to.

Funny you should say that....

[Kibo]

If anyone wants to start a second American Revolution to take the country back from the lawyers, I'm game :-).

Count me in [ebay.com]. I'd love to see Eugene Levy's foreign policy in action.

Re:what else does it say?

[Senior Frac]

However, when a full month is given to accept/decline the changes, along with (really easy) instruction on declining, I tend to relax a little.

But, do they actually let you decline?

I ask this because, starting in 1999, my privacy preferences were explicitly violated by them. Over the next 2 years I tried to stop being a customer of eBay, to no avail. Including attempting to email [e-mail]. It didn't work, they kept sending me email.

The whole sordid thing only ended once the old email add

PayPal has had about 200 agreements

[Anonymous Coward]

PayPal has had about 200 user agreements since its inception. The agreement would sometimes change five times in a month.

Popular Story

[jpsst34]

Considering that this story was posted hours ago and mine is going to be the third post, it makes me ask, "Does anyone still use eBay?" I got an email from them this morning about policy changes, but I didn't read it since I haven't used their auction in ages.

Re:Popular Story

[Mr. Slippery]

I got an email from them this morning about policy changes, but I didn't read it since I haven't used their auction in ages.

I hadn't used it in quite a while either, just re-activated my account for one auction I found through a multi-site search engine.

I usually look for stuff on Yahoo! auctions if I'm shopping for second-hand electronics and stuff. Where do you look besides eBay?

Re:Popular Story

[tha_mink]

Well, considering they presently have about 10,870,470 current auctions, I would say "Yes", some folks still use ebay. The better question is "Does anyone care about ebay's privacy policy". (probably not)

Re:Popular Story

[Neophytus]

it didnt make the front page, therefore nobody cares.

validating email addresses

[RGRistroph]

If you look at the email they sent you, the url to the new agreement contains a long random looking string which then re-directs to actual agreement, which has a human-sensible url.

It is likely that they are tracking which email addresses generated a visit to the page.

I've pasted below the URL's from my message, perhaps someone else can do the same for there's, and we can confirm they are different.

Feel free to visit these URLs and help screw up their stats a bit.

http://member.ebay.com/ad/ck/1065-13204- [ebay.com]