Major privacy and security issue with eBay

[sodium419]

Here's how eBay could be used right now for criminals to find homes with known expensive items and break in and steal those items.

Starting many years ago, eBay started showing the title of all items you sold on your feedback page.  The feedback is very useful for buyers, but showing the items sold is a huge privacy and security concern, which I'll explain how it can be used against you.

Let's say you're fairly well off and collect expensive jewelry.  You like to buy new jewelry and sell jewelry on eBay you no longer wear.  Sounds harmless.  But the problem is a criminal can use this information against you.

A criminal lists a bunch of items for sale on eBay at cost.  You (and many others) buy something from him.  He now has your address.  He then creates a list of addresses and uses your selling history to compile a list of homes and probable items that could be in each home.  You filter to the top of his list as you're only 60 miles away, it shows you've been selling expensive jewelry for years, and you happen to have an $15,000 piece being sold right now (so he knows it's in your possession).   He scopes out your home and breaks in, stealing not only the $15,000 piece that was for sale, but the rest of your collection.  This can be made far worse if there's a criminal network setup across the country doing this, as it maximizes the chances of finding someone local and easier to target.

I know you can hide ALL your feedback, which also includes hiding items sold.  But you really need to be showing feedback if you're selling something (it may even be required).  What I suggest is eBay add a new feature to hide all items sold but still show feedback.  I've had an eBay account for 24 years and have 100% positive feedback.  I never want to hide my feedback.  But hiding the items I've sold is a huge security and privacy concern of mine.  As shown above, this could easily be used to target eBay members.  And a network of criminals could really create a nationwide (or even worldwide) problem.

I currently turn off displaying feedback when I'm not selling something, then turn it back on just for when I have something for sale, then turn it back off.  That only minimizes my chances.  The only current way to totally prevent this is to turn off all feedback forever and only use eBay for buying.  Probably not what eBay wants.

So, eBay, please add a feature to hide items sold.  I see it as a major security and privacy issue.

[downunder-61]

So, eBay, please add a feature to hide items sold.  I see it as a major security and privacy issue.

They do, it is called a private listing

For buyer's it is called setting feedback to private

As to the rest, I guess it could happen, though I have never heard of it in all my years on eBay (and could happen on any on line site)- or the crook could follow someone home after they have visited a jewelry store I guess.

[gjs_16]

Yeah and it's true that I have $27,000 some in inventory but it's not three little pieces of 18k gold jewelry  with encrusted diamonds that a thief can just stick in their pocket and take to the pawn shop... Try rope, and rubber lines, and bearings, and pieces and parts and nuts and bolts and springs and fuel caps and all sorts of plastic and metal bits and pieces that retail for around $5-$20 a piece so if you want to pull up with a big utility trailer (you will need sides and I suggest a good 14 foot or longer) and load yourself up about a ton or two worth of this stuff, help relieve me of the horde, knock yourself out, heck on a good day I might even help you load!

[nobody*s_perfect]

As noted in the other post, eBay has this option already: a seller can set up any listing as 'Private" so that the feedback they receive does not show any information about the listing.

Another way to deal with this concern would be to use a PO Box as your address for receiving packages and as your return address on packages that you send.

[soh.maryl]

1. Do some more reading.  Feedback is entirely optional/voluntary, not mandatory/required.

2. Do you realize you have published a how-to instruction booklet on how to commit crimes?

[mrdutch1001]

hmmm quite a concept there...

wonder if that also works for all the big auction houses that post their sales and buyers; contest winners that have names posted/announced, and/or lottery winners that have their names posted./announced...and it goes on and on and on...

Best Get your head out of the sand as it's easy to find where you live and no one even has to have any connection to eBay... eBay is the least of your worries!

You don't think the world already knows where you and others live?.... they don't need eBay's info...

[maxine*j]

I see you've set your feedback to Private. 

My only comment, otherwise, is that anyone dealing in really valuable items, like jewellery worth thousands of dollars, ought to be concerned enough about theft to have some pretty hefty security already in place at their stores or homes or wherever they keep the stuff. 

And they might hesitate to post long, step-by-step, helpful guides to thievery for those who might not have come up with the ideas themselves.

=

[pikabo-icu]

One never knows what awaits them when they try robbing a house..

I know for me in my house, not only do we serve the Lord, we actively support 2A.

Stealing from people is not a career I would want nor would I feel badly about ending the career of a home invasion robber.

/just sayin.. 

[alcoforever]

Your scenario sounds rather convoluted to me.   Am wondering if a criminal would go to all that trouble.  Besides, who in their right mind would try to sell a $15,000 piece of jewelry on ebay?   If a criminal wanted that piece of jewelry, it would be much easier to just scam the seller out of it instead of going to all the trouble of breaking & entering.

[sodium419]

A private listing is only for new listings, not historical.  I have MANY years of listings which show what I've sold.  Also, doesn't a private listing limit you more that just hiding the item sold in your history?  I thought there were some negative aspects of doing that.

But still, it doesn't hide what I sold 10 years ago.

[soh.maryl]

And much less dangerous for the criminal if the invaded household happens to include an NRA member.

[maxine*j]

Oh, and as a P.S. to my previous post, which I ran out of time to edit:  All I have to do is look at your Completed Listings to see the three items you recently sold (which were, happily for you, given your concerns, of little value).

=

[sodium419]

1. Feedback that others give me for selling an item I can't control.  Please do your own reading of my post.

2. And yes, I do realize that I published a how-to guild for criminals.  That's how things get solved.  I've suggested this to eBay already, they don't seem to be concerned about privacy or security.  Just like how security issues with computer operating systems get solved, someone publishes how to exploit the OS and that forces them to patch the code.

[forward-motion]

I have NOOOO intentions of living my life in fear of what might happen. Nor am I going to make up scenarios of this or that happening. 

If a would be thief gets past my dogs and guns, then yeah they can take my stuff. 

My suggestion here is to hang a motor in a tree in the front yard.  

[sodium419]

Home security only slows a criminal down, it doesn't prevent it.