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I am not a frequent visitor/user of ebay. I do not like auto fill of my user ID - I am not talking about auto fill of my PASSWORD which is turned off on my Chrome - nor do I remember knowingly being asked to turn this feature on if such an option is available. Can I get user ID auto fill turned off ? I don't have this issue anywhere else on the internet. I am not a tech geek but have searched extensively for an answer, have I missed an obvious solution somewhere ? Is there no alternative other than deleting my information/account and not coming back ? Not trying to make any kind of statement about ebay, I simply intensely dislike this feature.
10 comments
eburtonlab
Mentor8 months ago@trainorgrandblancmi
eBay may be retaining your username in the eBay cookie. Deleting the eBay cookie and restarting your browser should eliminate that, but if you sign out and do not delete the eBay cookie, the username may be retained.
This can be a problem if you share a machine with others and you do not want your username to be revealed.
One way to avoid having to delete your eBay cookie each time you use eBay would be to use a private or incognito browser window to go to eBay; that way when you close the incognito browser window, no cookie or session data is retained.
trainorgrandblancmi
OP8 months agoI appreciate your feedback but think there is a disconnect. After I clear cache and cookies, the first time I log into ebay my user ID and password are requested. If I log out and back in, my user ID is not requested, only my password. No other site where I maintain an account and use regularly - shopping sites, credit unions, banks, stockbrokers, credit cards, federal government web sites - none of them skip asking me for my user ID, not even Amazon, though their Passkey option I decline might, I don't know. I have never used password storage apps. I always decline when a site wants to save my login data. And I have no clue about setting browser to delete cookies on exit, having already stated I am no tech geek. Just curious as all get out why ebay is different.
rfmtm
Mentor8 months agoOk, I have duplicated your issue. I didn't see it before, because my Firefox is set to clear the ebay cookie. If set to not clear the cookie it assumes I am signing in with the same ID and does indeed go straight to asking for a password or gives me the option to change ID's before doing so.
So it appears clearing the cookie is the way to prevent this from happening unless someone else has another idea.
trainorgrandblancmi
OP8 months agoYes and after reading other replies I researched and found I supposedly can selectively delete cookies in Chrome as you describe. I'll see how that goes since I rarely delve into any detail like that. But I guess it doesn't matter at this point, having discovered how thoroughly ebay and probably everyone else tracks you even when signed out (ebay might be the best at it). That's on me, like untold numbers of users who long ago stopped reading those updates to terms of use. I deleted my account and cancelled one credit card after receiving a 123 page update. Lastly, on reddit I found someone who said ebay permanently banned them from the platform because they forgot to turn off VPN before logging in to ebay. As Kurt Vonnegut said in his book Slaughterhouse-Five, "So it goes".
rfmtm
Mentor8 months agoJust as a note, other websites like you mentioned still know it's you, if their cookies aren't cleared, but have chosen to still make you enter your ID before your password even though the ID is already known. Ebay could also do this, but doesn't and as far as I know does not give the user the option either.
If you want to avoid all these sites from remembering you, set your browser to not only clear its cache, which is always a good idea, but also to clear all cookies when the browser closes. The only draw back to this is a little extra time to open a previous page and that you have to do a fresh log in each time you visit those websites in the future. The advantage is that you now get a clean log in and freshly updated webpages.
trainorgrandblancmi
OP8 months agoThanks. For as long as I've been using computers both for work and personally, I know very little of what is behind the keyboard and screen. Oh well. I cleared everything "for all time". I pulled up ebay, it said "Sign in", I did and it asked for my user ID. I completed sign in and then signed out. Sign in screen then said "Hi (my name)", I clicked my name, and it went straight to requesting password. So it sure appears to me that ebay is doing the auto fill. None of the sites I utilize regularly do this. And I just checked two financial sites I deal with. After initial logon/logoff without clearing cache, neither site auto filled my User ID when I signed in a second time. Go figure. As I initially stated I really dislike ebay doing this. I guess I really don't need to be there and will probably delete my info and account and walk away. Thanks for your time.
rfmtm
Mentor8 months agoYes, after you sign back in and the cookie is set again it will say Welcome Back "your name", but it doesn't load the ID field automatically, at least not on any of my accounts. This is much the same for many websites and the only way to totally avoid it is to have your browser delete the cookie upon exit.
@comics-scifi-collectibles Can you comment further about this?
rfmtm
Mentor8 months agoEbay is not doing this, your browser is. You need to remove ebay from Chrome's list of saved logins.
trainorgrandblancmi
OP8 months agoThanks for your reply. Been there done that. Ebay is not a saved login on Chrome. Perhaps you misunderstood my query. I am not asking about auto filling my Password. That is not happening. And I clear cache regularly, so why does ebay auto fill my User ID and can I turn it off ? I conduct personal matters with several sites. None of them auto fill my User ID.
rfmtm
Mentor8 months agoEbay should not be filling in your User ID. To make sure, sign out of ebay and not only clear your cache, but all ebay cookies. Once cookies are cleared ebay will not know who you are until you sign in so can not auto fill your ebay user ID. If it still gets filled in it is not ebay doing it.