Archive for Privacy
August 15, 2007 at 10:51 am · Filed under Geolocator, Privacy, Search, Site Use, The Future · By starrydesigns
Acknowledging privacy concerns raised by Etsy sellers, Jared disabled the ability to search by place on Geolocator3 for now:
jared says:
Hi, we hear your voice for privacy concerns. The ability to search by place has been disabled and will not be re-enabled until a good solution is found.
Most likely we will make the ability for a buyer to find you by your location an opt-in for sellers. You can choose whether you want to appear on the map or not. By default a seller will not appear on the map.
Remember that we create these features to help you as sellers be more successful. Thank you for helping us get it right.
Posted at 12:17 am, August 15 2007 EST
Read previous post about Geolocator3 here.
UPDATE by Soap
As of August 19, seller location (city or town) displays. About 2 days ago, Geo3 had been displaying “Ayrshire, Scotland” for any seller. I thought that was the interim solution to having what appeared to be seller’s billing (or former billing) locations displayed. In some cases, the city provided is not publicly disclosed on the Etsy seller’s profile.
August 11, 2007 at 2:33 am · Filed under Features, Geolocator, Privacy, Site Use, The Future · By starrydesigns
Let them know in this thread if you prefer radio buttons or dropdown.
They haven’t been able to implement a search by place and zipcode. If you think it is a high priority, please post here.
Here is the official word:
marumushi says:
Hey There! nice to meet you!
My name is Marcos, I’m helping Jared and Drew in the visualization team. I’m the person currently responsible for Geolocator 3.
First of all, thanks a ton everyone for all the feeback you sent here:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5177073&page=1
Since then, there’s been a ton of updates and bug fixes in the background based on your feedback.
Basically here’s what happened:
* added search selection for materials, tags and sellers.
* fixed image flickering bugs
* added timeout for images not loading
* added deep linking / browser back button ability
So I’ve prepared 2 flavours for search selection, please let me know which one you think is more elegant:
*radiobuttons
http://www.etsy.com/geo3.php?q=0
*dropdown
http://www.etsy.com/geo3.php?q=1
The only one thing I couldn’t implement was being able to search for a place name / zip code. Sorry!!!
Unfortunately that’s a deeper database issue we need to sort out first. If you want to see it happening (I know most of you do, and I want it too), please drop a line in the comments here. Maybe we can get our DB engineers to re prioritize that request!
Posted at 11:52 pm, August 9 2007 EST
August 7, 2007 at 1:09 pm · Filed under Privacy · By quirke
Stellaloella chimes in here to address seller concerns about the removal of sold prices and to explain admin’s reasons behind the change.
stellaloella says:
Hello again, everyone.
Lots of thoughts about this change since yesterday afternoon. Thank you for keeping it a civil discussion.
As I said previously, this is not the final solution, by any means. Obviously it has both benefits and drawbacks. We indeed looked at it long and hard from all angles before implementing it. Truly everything you’ve discussed so far here, we thought about too.
We want a better solution; this is just a step toward increased privacy for our members.
Please continue to share your suggestions for alternative solutions. Arguing with each other and complaining doesn’t bring much benefit. Please continue to keep it constructive.
As for the current situation, it’s been less than a day. It’s too soon to say whether this will have a definite impact on custom/re-orders of sold goods, but we certainly understand that it’s a legitimate concern for many sellers.
Indeed, this is a decision that was imposed upon those sellers who prefer an open book business philosophy. However, the previous system was just as much an imposition on those who prefer a closed book method on sales and purchases. Opinions on both sides have been duly noted. Thanks for your passionate responses.
This may shift the shopping experiences of some (or many). Some buyers will shop more, knowing that their purchase history is more private (good for sellers). Some buyers may shop less because they so heavily relied on shopping via sold items that it’s a hassle (not so good for sellers). Some buyers won’t be affected at all (status quo) and yet others will adapt their shopping habits to the change (marketplace evolution).
As for the lack of market research opportunities, hidden sold prices *may* actually increase the perceived value of items on Etsy overall. That would benefit the selling community as a whole, I should think. Sellers would be pricing based on the actual value of the work, not on the past market value of similar items. Well, that’s just an unproven economic theory, but it’s a possibility. (Not trying to convince anyone of anything, just laying out another point of view.)
I realize many of you are stressed about this change, just as many are elated. I ask that you just patiently give it a chance, while we work on further plans for the feedback system.
August 6, 2007 at 5:29 pm · Filed under Privacy · By JB
source: http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5182972
stellaloella says:
Hello, friends.
You may have noticed a little change on the site today; it’s one that we hope will make a big impact.
Sold item listings no longer display the item’s sale price to the public. They simply say “Sold.”
This change is in response to the concerns raised recently about buyers’ privacy issues. We are still looking at further changes to the feedback system to retain purchasing privacy, but we feel this a small move in the right direction.
If you were involved in a transaction as a buyer or seller, the item price will still be visible to you.
Thanks for all your patience on this matter. And please continue to let us know when you see an opportunity for improvement on Etsy. Your input is valuable, and we appreciate it (and you).
See previous coverage of this issue here.
EDIT by starrydesigns
For those who want the prices back on sold items, read what stellaloella has to say about this:
stellaloella says:
… Again, we acknowledge that this is an imperfect solution for many sellers who use their sold items as a showcase for custom orders. We’re looking at other options for future changes, but for now, this was the best choice without major restructuring…
Posted at 6:16 pm, August 6 2007 EST
August 3, 2007 at 9:15 pm · Filed under Bills, Etsy Communications, Privacy · By Elizabeth
We won’t point to it, because it’s not fair to the victim. But it’s yet another result of the hasty reactions to the most recent, and most FUBARed, billing situation.
Don’t ask about your specific bills in the fora. Etsy admin might answer with your personal info.
EDIT: The damage was done back in May, so it was a result blling problems, but not the current billing nightmare. That doesn’t make the admin’s post any less relevant, given Etsy’s violation of their privacy policy.
July 24, 2007 at 6:22 pm · Filed under Bills, Bugs, Customer Service, Etsy Communications, Images, Privacy, Site Security, Site Use · By The Janitor
Read here:
haim
Etsy Admin
haim says:
Here’s a quick update on some of the bigger bugs we’ve been fighting…
- The cookie/login issue
We’ve found a bug in how we generate random data that could possibly result in login “collisions”. It’s our theory that user A would login and get his random data token. Sometime thereafter user B would generate the exact same random data thus grabbing user A’s session. We’ve got a short term fix in the works that will highly decrease the chances of that happening. It’s our goal to have that fix pushed out early Wednesday AM EST. In addition we’re working on a larger long term fix to better handle cookies in general.
- 500 errors on the bill pages
Users with a large amount of unbilled charges or a large amount of charges under a single bill would generate “500 errors” when loading pages. We’ve got a fix in the works to paginate out these pages which should resolve the issue.
- Images not loading/hanging
This one is a horrible ghost in the machine. The crazy randomness of this issue along with an inability to recreate on demand is making this one incredibly difficult to track down. We’ve got people looking over every single part of our system to try and find where this gremlin lives. I don’t have any updates for you as of yet, but it’s something we’re all working on.
[Editor-added bolding]
These are updates on issues we covered previously:
Users reporting seeing other people’s account info which continued from our original coverage.
Image-loading issues.
July 15, 2007 at 2:01 pm · Filed under Marketing, Privacy · By Elizabeth
In this thread, MinuOriginals asks:
MinuOriginals says:
It would be nice if you would do a monthly chart that would show Number of Sales, Number of Items Listed and Number of New Members.
There are so many threads about slow times sales, what are the good months and attracting new buyers.
I think it would help answer some of these questions and I also think it would give sellers a better sense of the growth of Etsy.
Posted at 12:15 pm, July 13 2007 EST
SarahSays, Etsy’s lawyer, replies:
SarahSays says:
Here’s some general information concerning confidential business information.
Confidential business information refers to information whose disclosure may harm the business. In practice, this information may include, but is not limited to, trade secrets, sales and marketing plans, new product plans, notes associated with patentable inventions, business trends, detailed sales, cost, and profit figures, research and development ideas or information, manufacturing processes, and information about potential acquisitions, divestitures and investments.
Etsy must protect its confidential business information. Thank you for you concern and for understanding.
Sarah
Posted at 2:45 pm, July 13 2007 EST
However, in another thread, Quirke points out the link between Etsy’s business privacy policies, and the ongoing issues with privacy issues for its customers:
quirke says:
In another thread someone requested that admin kindly reveal some of their pertinent business stats to see how Etsy is growing.
RD replied:
“We keep sitewide stats on the downlow for business reasons…”
Well, there are quite a few sellers who would like to keep their stats on the downlow for business reasons too.
So, what is Etsy’s transparency in the marketplace? On the “downlow”. Yet so far they expect their sellers *and* buyers to be okay with having their entire selling and buying history open for any random person to see, including how much money they’ve made, when they made it, when their high or low sales periods are, how often they list, etc etc etc.
[edited for brevity; see thread for entire post]
Later in the thread, Admin assures the community that these issues are being carefully considered.
The privacy issue on Etsy continues to reappear in many contexts. Etsy has said they are working on it. My opinion: sooner would be better than later.
July 15, 2007 at 1:42 pm · Filed under Marketing, Privacy, Site Use, UEN Exclusive · By Elizabeth
As we discussed in this post at the UEN, there are some serious privacy concerns involved with completely open buyer and seller history.
That discussion has spread into a situation with repeated edits/deletions to the article about Etsy on Wikipedia.org.
Looking through the history of the edits to the article, Vanessa Bertozzi, from Etsy’s PR department, has edited the Privacy section of the article to reflect more favorably upon Etsy. For example, here are two edits she made, one additive, and one subtractive:
Through feedback, a specific buyer’s purchases can be tracked. There is no option to make any part of the feedback history private again. All items, with their full descriptions, are visible to the internet at large. Etsy errs on the site of an open marketplace in which item prices and other information becomes part of the public record.
Vanessa added the bolded sentence above.
Many Etsy sellers are also buyers, therefore, the previous concerns also apply to them. Additionally, sellers are forced to display particulars of their business accounting to the internet.
Vanessa deleted the bolded sentence above.
However, someone has taken it upon themselves to vandalize the article, rather than dispute the edits Vanessa has been making. In the past three weeks, the “Privacy” section (and only that section) has been completely deleted three times. Two were entirely without comment. One had a comment about the section being “innacurate [sic] and immaterial to the article”. Requests to clarify that comment went ignored.
Someone really doesn’t like the “Privacy” section; but they have no interest in discussing how to fix it up.
Proper procedure for editing an article on Wikipedia is to discuss the edits and the reasoning behind them. Simple deletion of what someone doesn’t like will result only in restoration of the deleted sections.
The UEN will continue to follow this situation.
July 11, 2007 at 5:10 am · Filed under Bugs, Editorial, Features, Privacy, Site Security, Site Use · By The Janitor
[JULY 22 UPDATE: two more Etsy users report they see other users' convos]
Have you ever logged into your Etsy account only to see yourself in someone else’s account? Some Etsy users have reported seeing this.
On July 2, Facade compiled some of the threads in which different Etsy users reported similar accounts of apparently accessing other Etsy users’ pages, including convos and billing page. These posts were as far back as Feb or Mar 2007. To simplify viewing, I’ve posted Facade’s original post in the thread beneath Chris’ response copied below, 8 days later (he also locked the thread):
RevolvingDork says:
The only way this phenomenom has occured is when a user’s cookies are read improperly or multiple users are logging into the same machine. When it does occur, it is not possible to see any private data or alter any part of another user’s account. It is just the username at the top of the page that is shown incorrectly.
If you experience this issue, be sure to do the following:
1. Deativate any web accelerator programs you have running
2. Click Etsy’s logout button
3. Clear your browser’s cookies
4. Restart your computer
5. Log back into Etsy
If you follow these steps, your login should work normally.
Posted at 3:04 am, July 11 2007 EST
(bolding added by editor)
The bolded part disturbs me a bit - what exactly does “when a user’s cookies are read improperly” mean? User #1’s cookies can be read as those for user #2 - on a different computer, possibly in different state or even a different country?
Had the thread not been locked, people could’ve asked Chris to clarify his statement.
EDIT July 11: Click here to post about Chris’ post above or about other concerns on this issue.
___________________________________
Facade’s original post:
facade says:
What’s up with that bug that puts people inside the wrong Etsy account?
I’ve seen mention of it scattered all over the place, and eclipse rounded up a few more. I think the problem’s falling through the cracks because people have posted in threads that dealt with unrelated bugs. So I’m gathering examples here.
fallinstyle:
Someone else created two treasuries using her userid. She wasn’t logged in at the time. Nobody ever figured out how it happened.
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5142500
HeatherLynnWhite:
Saw someone else’s convos while logged in to her own account.
(Don’t know if she would have been able to read the convos.)
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5144215
magicforestcreations:
Ended up in someone else’s shop.
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5144215&page=2
Taina:
Kept seeing someone else’s convos when trying to check her own.
(Don’t know if she would have been able to read the convos.)
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5115794
sereneonion:
Ended up in misocat’s account.
(Could access misocat’s Etsy bill. Could *not* edit/delete misocat’s listings, thank goodness.)
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5054346&page=2
Please, somebody fix this. Even if random people can’t open my convos, they could still read that first line in the summary. I’m especially worried that someone else was apparently able to make treasuries under fallinstyle’s i.d.
Posted at 5:08 pm, July 2 2007 EST
EDIT July 11: Another thread in which melisap reports she appears to be logged into another person’s account - click here to view the thread (Chris locked this one, referring it to Facade’s now locked thread - copied above):
melisap says:
There was a recent thread on this and I thought I would repost because 1- it happened again and 2- I was logged into the same person’s account as I was before. I didn’t go anywhere in her shop, but I did screen print it for ‘proof’. Refreshing the page cleared the problem and brought me back to my page.
It’s scary that this happened on two different computers and that I ended up in the same account. This could be dangerous…
Posted at 5:15 pm, July 10 2007 EST
(editor-added bolding)
melisap clarifies in an ongoing thread
Both times this happened to me were on two separate computers to which only I have access to. A home laptop and a work computer. I was logged into the same person both times, and I have a screenshot of the gal’s store I was logged into . . . .
In addition, it is NOT just the username at the top. I can view her ENTIRE store. The front page has ALL of her listings. I have a screenshot, so please do not say that this is just a username at the top issue . . . .
This account I have never seen before and on two computers to which only I have access to.
EDIT by starrydesigns
Chillionaire says:
Hi all!
I wish I had more information to pass along right now, but I do want to remind everyone that even if for some reason someone gains access to your account, it is impossible for them to view all your billing info. In order to change any billing info, it must all be re-entered and card numbers are not visible to even you.
We hope to have more on this soon, and we will be sure to keep you updated.
—>Lori40
Posted at 2:30 pm, July 11 2007 EST
Another thread locked:
RevolvingDork says:
Shutting this down to prevent panic due to sensationalism — There is no known issue with login security on Etsy. If you are having issues, please bring them up with specifics in a new thread
Posted at 8:16 pm, July 11 2007 EST
[EDITOR'S NOTE: I will edit this when I have more time and I have had some sleep]
June 6, 2007 at 12:42 pm · Filed under Feedback, Privacy · By Elizabeth
There’s been an ongoing (for two months) thread discussing the problem of a buyer’s history being completely open to examination, and a seller’s pricing history also available to anyone wanting to check it out. Both present huge problems.
Sellers often raise their prices over time, to reflect material costs, establishment in the marketplace, etc. They don’t want someone (a buyer or a competitor) to see that the price marked today is more than the price marked six months ago, because they shouldn’t have to explain their pricing strategy. Sellers also buy materials on Etsy. Their material costs should not be open to examination.
Buyers have no protection for hiding a gift from someone without specifically asking the seller not to leave feedback (and perhaps not leaving feedback themselves). Also, leaving a buyer’s history public leads to other privacy violations. Some buyers have indicated they might stop buying if the privacy issue is not addressed.
Admin finally commented yesterday:
stellaloella says:
We definitely hear you, and understand your privacy concerns. But this is a very complicated matter. We’re working to figure out what changes would be most beneficial to our users, and the input from this thread is really important to us.
However, it’s not going to be a quick & easy fix; I’ll be honest with you. Changes to the system involve a lot of careful consideration and complex programming work.
I’m really disheartened that people are are leery of shopping on the site in the meantime, so I want you to understand that we are indeed listening to on this matter. But hastily made changes are not the best way to handle this situation.
Posted at 3:26 pm, June 5 2007 EST
EDIT:
Also seen in another thread:
ErinHaldrup says:
Hi Everyone!
We are very aware of this concern and we are discussing what to do about it. I saw a thread like this a few weeks ago and I asked RD to post a response. Can’t remember what it was called at the moment, but essentially he said Etsy was originally designed with full disclosure in mind. However- you all make valid points and we hear you. Thanks, as always, for your thoughtful responses and input!
Posted at 1:58 pm, June 9 2007 EST
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