eBay Stops Revealing Shopping History on Feedback Pages
By Ina Steiner
AuctionBytes.com
October 11, 2007
eBay has reversed its decision to display auction titles on the "Feedback as a Buyer" page. Some buyers reported being uncomfortable with the "snapshot" view of recently purchased items that was introduced earlier this year as part of eBay Feedback 2.0.
eBay announced the reversal on Wednesday through a posting on the General Announcement Board. The initial decision to include listing titles on the feedback pages had brought immediate controversy, according to eBay. "Buyers viewed this as an invasion of privacy, even though this information is readily available through advanced search. Sellers complained because they feared buyers would not bid/buy, since no other e-commerce site includes buyer purchase history so prevalently." (See AuctionBytes' coverage of the initial reaction to the feature in this March 2007 article: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m03/i07/s01).
eBay said a survey of buyers showed over a third of them were concerned or extremely concerned with the visibility of the information on the "Feedback as a Buyer" page.
It appears eBay is leaving listing titles on the "Feedback as a Seller" page.