A Message from Rob Chesnut – Safeguarding Member IDs

[bargainbloodhound]

Okay.  A new piece o' carp appearing today that I'm sure is connected to all this hiding of bidders' names.

I don't think it's connected to this change because the only one who will be able to see the bidders names will be the seller.  If you place something on your watch list all you'll see is bidder1 FB 10 40%, Bidder 2 FB 100 97%, etc.

[stardust]

I have always followed the bidders' names, because there is a particular artist whose works I follow, and who has a following of bidders, and I can always see who's ahead on the bidding from my watch list.  The bidders' names are gone!

[mandy]

Safeguarding Member IDs went live on the main Australia site on 23 November:

FAQ: http://pages.ebay.com.au/safeids.html
Announcement: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/au/200611211334442.html

We're implementing this new system on listings where the high bid is AU$250 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 AU$250 will display as it does today.

EDIT:
Discussion on eBay Australia message boards:
SHILL BIDDING to be officially enhanced by eBay: Goin down the gurgler
http://forums.ebay.com.au/thread.jspa?th...=600037385&tstart=0

[FiberGuy]

This is really ugly...

Here's some comments on OTWA:

Not only Ebay Motors, but tonight it has hit Ebay auctions in Australian dollars - not just for items over $250, but also the $7.00 postcards in my seller list at the time of writing.

http://www.otwa.com/community/showthread.php?t=47456

[BellisimaJ.]

This is really ugly...

UGLY is right! 

How many more nails in the coffin will ebay require?

[mandy]

eBay UK is the latest site to introduce the program:

***Trust & Safety: Introducing Safeguarding Member IDs***

21 November, 2006 | 11:03AM GMT


We would like to let you know about an important Trust & Safety initiative that will be launching on eBay.co.uk within the next few days.

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

[mandy]

Latest update: Safeguarding Member IDs expands from eBay Motors to all of eBa.com and eBay.ca

***A Message from Rob Chesnut – Launch of Safeguarding Member IDs on eBay.com and eBay Canada*** 

A couple of months ago, I told you about an important new initiative called Safeguarding Member IDs (read my announcement from November 2, 2006). Safeguarding Member IDs (SMI) is a significant step forward in protecting eBay's bidders, who have increasingly become targets for unwanted commercial and malicious spam, such as phishing, spoof, and fake Second Chance Offers.

SMI adds a new layer of privacy by replacing specific User IDs with aliases (bidder 1, bidder 2, bidder 3, etc.). To ensure buyers continue to feel trust in the bidding process, SMI also provides an updated Bid History page with aggregate information about the bidders involved in a given listing, as well as their other recent activity with the listing's seller.

Coming this week: eBay.com and eBay Canada to Launch SMI
Following SMI's introduction last fall on eBay Motors, our eBay sites in the United Kingdom and Australia also made the decision to launch SMI. The results we're seeing for all three launches indicate that these changes are having the impact we are striving for – in short, a reduction in unwanted commercial and malicious spam (including Fake Second Chance Offers) to bidders on higher-priced auction-style listings.

As a result eBay.com and eBay.ca will be launching SMI later this week. SMI will impact listings on eBay.com that start at or reach a bid level of $200 or greater. On eBay Canada, it will impact listings above the C$220 level. Please read our Safeguarding Member IDs Frequently Asked Questions for more information.

Community Concerns
I'd like to acknowledge the concerns we've heard from some members who believe these changes may encourage shill bidding (the act of using friends or alias User IDs to bid on a seller's own listing to artificially increase the bidding level.) First, let me make it very clear that shill bidding is not tolerated on eBay. Not only is this activity prohibited by our policies (read our shill bidding policy), it is also a crime in many states.

In addition to the Bid History changes I've described above which are designed to give buyers the information they need to feel confident, it's important to know that over the years, eBay has invested heavily in shill detection systems. We can proactively detect and investigate possible shill bidding scenarios with a higher rate of accuracy than ever before. These backend systems collect more information on selling and bidding activity than our Community has access to, so we can detect patterns and ascertain identities much more accurately.

Be assured that we will continue to monitor the sites where SMI has launched to ensure that increased shill bidding does not become an unintended consequence of SMI.

I want to thank the Community for the support you've shown for these changes thus far. While reducing transparency on the site is understandably controversial, I believe these changes strike the right balance between the need for openness and the need to protect our members from online threats.

[BellisimaJ.]

SMI adds a new layer of privacy by replacing specific User IDs with aliases (bidder 1, bidder 2, bidder 3, etc.). To ensure buyers continue to feel trust in the bidding process

Well, bid on ebay at your own peril.

Can you say  "shill bidding will rule "?

[dimucci]

Can you say  "shill bidding will rule "?

I would assume we can safely say it.

[mandy]

Update: some changes to the policy:

**A Message from Rob Chesnut – Update on Safeguarding Member IDs*** 

In January, we introduced an important initiative called Safeguarding Member IDs (read my announcement from January 8, 2007). This initiative, also known as SMI, is designed to protect eBay's bidders from unwanted commercial and malicious spam, such as phishing, spoof, and fake Second Chance Offers. We've had a few months now to watch SMI in action, and we are pleased with the results so far. Since introducing SMI, we have seen a significant reduction in fake Second Chance Offers and other types of solicitations sent to bidders on higher-priced auction-style listings.

We've also received a lot of feedback from the Community about how we can improve the user interface, and we've been working hard to do so. Specifically, we want to replace some of the transparency that was removed when SMI was first introduced, without affecting the protection we're providing for bidders.

This week, we'll be making the following adjustments to SMI:

  1. Enhancements to Search by Bidder. When members use the Search by Bidder feature (found under Advanced Search), they’ll now be able to see all the details of that bidder’s bidding activity on items below the $200 threshold.

  2. Sellers can use Advanced Search to research potential buyers. Sellers will be able to use Advanced Search to conduct full research on their current bidders for a 48 hour period after the bid is placed. In addition, they will also be able to research the activity of any member who sends them an Ask Seller a Question email or uses Best Offer within a 48 hour period of the email/offer being sent.

  3. Safeguarding Member IDs on listings with a Reserve or Buy It Now over $200. If a bidder bids on a listing where the Reserve price or Buy It Now is above $200, their ID will be anonymized just as if they had placed a bid over $200.

  4. Anonymous bidder IDs for Best Offers. The IDs of buyers on the Best Offer history page will no longer be fully displayed to viewers – the last part of their ID will be hidden by asterisks. However, the seller of the item will be able to see the ID in full, as before.

To learn more about SMI, please read our FAQs, which have been updated to reflect these new changes. As always, I appreciate your support as we work to keep the marketplace safe.

Sincerely,

Rob Chesnut
Senior Vice President, Global Trust & Safety