Since eBay began in 1995, it’s been our job to balance the need for openness and transparency in the marketplace, with the need to protect our Community of members from the threats that have appeared as the Internet has flourished. As the Community has grown, we’ve had to take measures to protect our members that also reduce transparency.

From the beginning, any member of the Community could request the contact details of any other member and the bidding process was very transparent. As we grew, we limited communication to members involved in transactions with each other. Then in 2003, we eliminated the public display of email addresses from the site, and therefore required thousands of people to set up new User IDs. Naturally, as we’ve stepped up education and other efforts to improve safety, potential fraudsters continued their efforts to try to exploit our members.

The User IDs of members -- plus their member information such as feedback and previous bidding and/or buying activity -- have always been freely available to anyone visiting the site. Members have been able to access this information from the item page, bid history page, and Advanced Search by Bidder feature. Unfortunately, while bid history and contact information about trading colleagues are helpful when evaluating a transaction, and provide a level of trust within the transaction. fraudsters can use this information for potentially harmful purposes.

One way they use this information is to send spam emails, spoof emails, and fake Second Chance Offer emails. While legitimate Second Chance Offer emails are a great tool on eBay that give sellers the ability to offer another buyer an additional item they may have available, fake Second Chance Offers and other types of solicitations sent by fraudsters generally lure the targeted member off the eBay website and collect payment through an unsafe payment method, such as wire transfer -- all while providing the false impression that eBay endorses the transaction.

As our Community knows, the problem of spam, spoof and fake Second Chance Offer emails has not gone away. In fact, despite industry-leading efforts to educate the Community about online safety (eBay Toolbar, tutorials and safety messaging), partnering with law enforcement and industry groups, and investments in technology that make the site safer, we’ve seen this problem grow. Increasingly, sellers and buyers have turned to us for a solution.

Introducing the Safeguarding Member IDs Project
The Safeguarding Member IDs project is a new approach to auction-style listings that offers more privacy for our members through changing how bidding information is displayed. Following intensive development and review, as well as Community input, we believe the Safeguarding Member IDs project provides the Community with enough information about the bidders involved in an auction-style listing for them to feel confident in placing a bid -- without revealing actual User IDs. We’re implementing this new system on listings with a high bid of £100 or greater, which is where we believe it can have the greatest positive impact. The bid information for listings where the bid is lower than £100 will display as it does today.

Here’s what will change for listings with a high bid of £100 or more:

• On the bid history page for each listing we’ll replace member User IDs with aliases (such as Bidder 1, Bidder 2 and Bidder 3) in the order of their bids placed. For each bidder involved in a listing, we’ll display the number of bids in unique categories that they’ve placed, a range that their feedback score falls within (i.e. 10-49, for instance), their percentage of positive feedback, their length of time as an eBay member, and the number of bids they’ve placed on the item. At the end of a listing, the winning bidder’s User ID will be displayed on the item page. Please note: Sellers will still be able to access bidder information on their listings through the Bid History page and the My eBay selling table.
• In My eBay, members will no longer have access to the high-bidder column from bid and watch tables.
• On the item page, you’ll only be able to see the high-bidder ID if you are the signed-in seller of the item or the signed-in high bidder.
• Through the Advanced Search by Bidder link, we’ll only show completed listings within the last 30 days.

Future enhancements are being designed that will provide even more transaction data about the bidders and seller involved in a transaction. We’ll continue to update the community on these changes as these plans become finalised.

Safeguarding Member IDs - Launch plans
Even the smallest changes on the eBay marketplace may have unexpected effects, and we want to move forward carefully. While we are cautious of making changes to the site during the Christmas period, we feel strongly that this is the right thing to do for the Community.

We rolled out these changes on eBay Motors in the United States a couple of weeks ago and we have decided to adopt these changes for eBay.co.uk starting next week. If all goes well, we could implement the Safeguarding Bidder IDs project on eBay.com in early 2007.

To learn more, please read our Safeguarding Member ID Frequently Asked Questions.

Regards,
The eBay.co.uk Team