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From www.theregister.co.uk
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eBay to Feds: come and get what you want
By Andrew Orlowski
Posted: 19/09/2003 at 19:24 GMT
Israeli daily Haaretz has unearthed highly embarrassing, and disturbing comments by an eBay executive. To an audience of law enforcement officials, eBay's Joseph Sullivan boasts that his company's privacy policy is meaningless.
"We don't make you show a subpoena, except in exceptional cases," Sullivan told a closed-door session at the CyberCrime 2003 conference last week.
"When someone uses our site and clicks on the `I Agree' button, it is as if he agrees to let us submit all of his data to the legal authorities. Which means that if you are a law-enforcement officer, all you have to do is send us a fax with a request for information, and ask about the person behind the seller's identity number, and we will provide you with his name, address, sales history and other details - all without having to produce a court order. We want law enforcement people to spend time on our site."
Law enforcement snoopers will have plenty of material to work with: Sullivan also boasts that eBay has logged every item of user information since 1995. eBay helps with over 200 a month, Haaretz reports.
It's the second privacy scandal this week. Host of privacy site Don't Spy On.US, Bill Scannell discovered that budget airline Jet Blue handed over 5 million passenger records to the Transport Security Administration and a contractor, which augmented them with credit records and passengers' social security information. You can still read the details here (PDF, 2MB - Thanks to ls). ®
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This bothers me a bit.
I have nothing to hide, never sold anything pirated or stolen, or bought pirated or stolen goods from eBay. Whilst having a lot of personal information would help with prosecuting those that do deal in illegal goods on eBay, it irritates me to think that they everything I do on the site is logged.
If a court order isn't needed, do eBay check that it is actually an LEA that's requesting information? What is to stop me from phoning up, saying I'm police I need to know about whatever user ID. Maybe they are more vigilant. I would hope so.
The other thing that bothers me is that eBay could build up a profile of me. How long before they use this information to try make suggestions on auctions that might interest me?
This was just something that interested me and I wondered what your views were on it.
---------------------------------------
eBay to Feds: come and get what you want
By Andrew Orlowski
Posted: 19/09/2003 at 19:24 GMT
Israeli daily Haaretz has unearthed highly embarrassing, and disturbing comments by an eBay executive. To an audience of law enforcement officials, eBay's Joseph Sullivan boasts that his company's privacy policy is meaningless.
"We don't make you show a subpoena, except in exceptional cases," Sullivan told a closed-door session at the CyberCrime 2003 conference last week.
"When someone uses our site and clicks on the `I Agree' button, it is as if he agrees to let us submit all of his data to the legal authorities. Which means that if you are a law-enforcement officer, all you have to do is send us a fax with a request for information, and ask about the person behind the seller's identity number, and we will provide you with his name, address, sales history and other details - all without having to produce a court order. We want law enforcement people to spend time on our site."
Law enforcement snoopers will have plenty of material to work with: Sullivan also boasts that eBay has logged every item of user information since 1995. eBay helps with over 200 a month, Haaretz reports.
It's the second privacy scandal this week. Host of privacy site Don't Spy On.US, Bill Scannell discovered that budget airline Jet Blue handed over 5 million passenger records to the Transport Security Administration and a contractor, which augmented them with credit records and passengers' social security information. You can still read the details here (PDF, 2MB - Thanks to ls). ®
------------------------------------------------
This bothers me a bit.
I have nothing to hide, never sold anything pirated or stolen, or bought pirated or stolen goods from eBay. Whilst having a lot of personal information would help with prosecuting those that do deal in illegal goods on eBay, it irritates me to think that they everything I do on the site is logged.
If a court order isn't needed, do eBay check that it is actually an LEA that's requesting information? What is to stop me from phoning up, saying I'm police I need to know about whatever user ID. Maybe they are more vigilant. I would hope so.
The other thing that bothers me is that eBay could build up a profile of me. How long before they use this information to try make suggestions on auctions that might interest me?
This was just something that interested me and I wondered what your views were on it.
I don't like the thought of people having my infroamtion either, for instance credit card details. What is to stop someone from infiltrating the law enforcement database and stealing details to create fake passports with your name, or purchase itmes with your credit card? I would say however that alot of so called "private" websites give information out to other people, wheter they be Law Enforcement Agencies or unscrupulous makers of spam.
I've never thought of the net as being anonymous. Just I don't like much information being held on me.
I don't have a problem with my name and address being on file, it's often necessary. It's the thought that needlessly they could pull up information about my past purchases etc.
Do they need this to provide a service to me? No.
Does it currently help their business? No.
Then why can't they just purge old records?
I don't have a problem with my name and address being on file, it's often necessary. It's the thought that needlessly they could pull up information about my past purchases etc.
Do they need this to provide a service to me? No.
Does it currently help their business? No.
Then why can't they just purge old records?
Notorious Biggles wrote:
> it irritates me to think that everything I do
> on the site is logged.
Look on the bright side. Everything you do with your computer online can be logged. Sometimes offline too. There's a misconception that the internet is a private playground which we can play about in anonymously.
But in the same way that when you walk through the town centre you're monitored by police cameras, they may not know who you are, but they know what you're up to.
Same with the internet. I'm under no illusions that even though I come on here under the nom de plume 'FantasyMeister' that doesn't mean that should they wish to SR couldn't just pull up a file of everything I'd ever looked at, written, bought and searched for on their site, as well as a list of what sites I'd been on previously and possibly what sites I surfed to afterwards... and then link it to my I.P. address, plop my name and address on it and send it off to a requesting authority.
> it irritates me to think that everything I do
> on the site is logged.
Look on the bright side. Everything you do with your computer online can be logged. Sometimes offline too. There's a misconception that the internet is a private playground which we can play about in anonymously.
But in the same way that when you walk through the town centre you're monitored by police cameras, they may not know who you are, but they know what you're up to.
Same with the internet. I'm under no illusions that even though I come on here under the nom de plume 'FantasyMeister' that doesn't mean that should they wish to SR couldn't just pull up a file of everything I'd ever looked at, written, bought and searched for on their site, as well as a list of what sites I'd been on previously and possibly what sites I surfed to afterwards... and then link it to my I.P. address, plop my name and address on it and send it off to a requesting authority.
From www.theregister.co.uk
---------------------------------------
eBay to Feds: come and get what you want
By Andrew Orlowski
Posted: 19/09/2003 at 19:24 GMT
Israeli daily Haaretz has unearthed highly embarrassing, and disturbing comments by an eBay executive. To an audience of law enforcement officials, eBay's Joseph Sullivan boasts that his company's privacy policy is meaningless.
"We don't make you show a subpoena, except in exceptional cases," Sullivan told a closed-door session at the CyberCrime 2003 conference last week.
"When someone uses our site and clicks on the `I Agree' button, it is as if he agrees to let us submit all of his data to the legal authorities. Which means that if you are a law-enforcement officer, all you have to do is send us a fax with a request for information, and ask about the person behind the seller's identity number, and we will provide you with his name, address, sales history and other details - all without having to produce a court order. We want law enforcement people to spend time on our site."
Law enforcement snoopers will have plenty of material to work with: Sullivan also boasts that eBay has logged every item of user information since 1995. eBay helps with over 200 a month, Haaretz reports.
It's the second privacy scandal this week. Host of privacy site Don't Spy On.US, Bill Scannell discovered that budget airline Jet Blue handed over 5 million passenger records to the Transport Security Administration and a contractor, which augmented them with credit records and passengers' social security information. You can still read the details here (PDF, 2MB - Thanks to ls). ®
------------------------------------------------
This bothers me a bit.
I have nothing to hide, never sold anything pirated or stolen, or bought pirated or stolen goods from eBay. Whilst having a lot of personal information would help with prosecuting those that do deal in illegal goods on eBay, it irritates me to think that they everything I do on the site is logged.
If a court order isn't needed, do eBay check that it is actually an LEA that's requesting information? What is to stop me from phoning up, saying I'm police I need to know about whatever user ID. Maybe they are more vigilant. I would hope so.
The other thing that bothers me is that eBay could build up a profile of me. How long before they use this information to try make suggestions on auctions that might interest me?
This was just something that interested me and I wondered what your views were on it.
---------------------------------------
eBay to Feds: come and get what you want
By Andrew Orlowski
Posted: 19/09/2003 at 19:24 GMT
Israeli daily Haaretz has unearthed highly embarrassing, and disturbing comments by an eBay executive. To an audience of law enforcement officials, eBay's Joseph Sullivan boasts that his company's privacy policy is meaningless.
"We don't make you show a subpoena, except in exceptional cases," Sullivan told a closed-door session at the CyberCrime 2003 conference last week.
"When someone uses our site and clicks on the `I Agree' button, it is as if he agrees to let us submit all of his data to the legal authorities. Which means that if you are a law-enforcement officer, all you have to do is send us a fax with a request for information, and ask about the person behind the seller's identity number, and we will provide you with his name, address, sales history and other details - all without having to produce a court order. We want law enforcement people to spend time on our site."
Law enforcement snoopers will have plenty of material to work with: Sullivan also boasts that eBay has logged every item of user information since 1995. eBay helps with over 200 a month, Haaretz reports.
It's the second privacy scandal this week. Host of privacy site Don't Spy On.US, Bill Scannell discovered that budget airline Jet Blue handed over 5 million passenger records to the Transport Security Administration and a contractor, which augmented them with credit records and passengers' social security information. You can still read the details here (PDF, 2MB - Thanks to ls). ®
------------------------------------------------
This bothers me a bit.
I have nothing to hide, never sold anything pirated or stolen, or bought pirated or stolen goods from eBay. Whilst having a lot of personal information would help with prosecuting those that do deal in illegal goods on eBay, it irritates me to think that they everything I do on the site is logged.
If a court order isn't needed, do eBay check that it is actually an LEA that's requesting information? What is to stop me from phoning up, saying I'm police I need to know about whatever user ID. Maybe they are more vigilant. I would hope so.
The other thing that bothers me is that eBay could build up a profile of me. How long before they use this information to try make suggestions on auctions that might interest me?
This was just something that interested me and I wondered what your views were on it.