See August 20 update below - seller location in Geo3 now reflects info displayed in seller’s public profile.

Our previous coverage and comments are here:
http://etsynews.com/338/ability-to-search-by-place-on-geolocator-3-disabled/
http://etsynews.com/332/help-test-geolocator3-part-2/

Re-cap & update:
-Admin solicited additional feedback on the Geo3 function

- People realized they could display the exact city location for any seller

- The location displayed did not necessarily match the seller’s own entry for “location.” Exact seller location retrievable even where the seller left location in his/her public profile blank.

- The locations appeared to be derived from current or past billing addresses provided to Etsy. To open an Etsy store, a seller is REQUIRED to submit billing info including billing address
Etsy TOS include a blurb saying they will restrict uses of confidential info submitted to Etsy

- On August 15, Jared acknowledged users’ privacy concerns and said “[t]he ability to search by place has been disabled and will not be re-enabled until a good solution is found.” Yay - privacy acknowledged!

- People still posted they could see other sellers’ city locations still. Boo - private info still showing.

- On August 17, any seller’s location was all showing as a city in Scotland. Yay - private info not showing any longer!

-UPDATE On August 19, each seller’s exact city is showing again. Appears to be derived from billing info. But City only appears to be showing without State. Boo - private info showing again.

As far as I’m aware the only time addresses are harvested on Etsy is for shipping and when an user wants to set up a store and only then it’s billing address/card info that’s submitted. Addresses are not required to have a regular Etsy account - which only required a valid email account and an Etsy password + user name.

UPDATE August 20: a seller’s location in Geo3 now reflects info displayed in the seller’s public profile. If anyone finds this is not true generally, please comment below or on the new post about this issue. Yay!

jared says:
Thanks everyone for your great feedback. :)

The ‘location’ field of the Geo3 should be showing what you type in the ‘City’ field of your Public Profile. Sorry about the Scotland error, although wouldn’t it be nice if we are all there, sharing Etsy stories in some pub by the sea?