User:Curmudgeopn/eBay disclosing excessive informaton

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Company	EBay
Start Date
End Date
Status
Product Line
Product
Article Type	Service
Type	Privacy
Short Description	eBay shares buyers' names, addresses and phone numbers with sellers by default, and historically exposed buyer email addresses through PayPal transactions

eBay provides transaction parties with each other's personal data, including name, address and telephone number, when a purchase is made. Between approximately 2003 and April 2018, buyers' email addresses were also exposed to sellers through PayPal, which served as eBay's default payment processor for much of that period. The email exposure ended in April 2018, which eBay stated was at its own request.

==What is shared==

eBay's Privacy Notice states that when users are involved in a transaction, they have access to each other's name, username, email address and other contact and shipping information. Upon completion, cancellation or invalidation of a transaction, eBay provides the counterparty's personal data, including contact information, shipping and billing information, or return address. eBay states that once shared, the recipient is the controller of that data and is responsible for any further processing. Buyers on eBay's community forums have reported sellers obtaining their telephone numbers from order details, and have questioned why the number is provided at all.

==Email exposure via PayPal==

For most of the period in which PayPal processed eBay payments, the buyer's registered PayPal email address was disclosed to the seller as part of the transaction. The address disclosed was the one registered to the PayPal account, which serves as the account's identifier, rather than any address configured on the buyer's eBay account. In April 2018, sellers reported that PayPal had stopped displaying buyer email addresses on eBay transactions. PayPal confirmed the change was made at eBay's request. Prior to the change, sellers had used the disclosed addresses for marketing and other purposes. Following the change, instructional videos describing workarounds, such as retrieving the buyer's address by replying to PayPal's transaction confirmation email, circulated among sellers.

==eBay's masking capability==

eBay operates intermediation for member-to-member email. Messages sent through eBay's platform route through aliased addresses at members.ebay.com, so that users' real email addresses are not disclosed to one another during ordinary correspondence. The April 2018 change to PayPal email disclosure demonstrates that this disclosure was configurable rather than technically necessary. No equivalent masking exists for postal addresses, which are required for delivery, or for telephone numbers, whose provision is not explained by delivery requirements. Couriers do not generally require the recipient's telephone number from the sender of a parcel.

==Retention and misuse==

==See also==

* EBay feedback purchase history exposure * EBay shares user data with advertising platforms * De-anonymization ==References==