eBay page publicly displays sales data, sellers believe their privacy is violated!

On some mainstream e-commerce shopping platforms in my country, it is common to display approximate sales data of products. These data can provide a reference for consumers when purchasing goods.

Recently , online shopping platform eBay has also begun to publicly display sellers' sales on their pages. Currently, everyone can see the sales and page views of products when browsing the products on the eBay website, which has triggered a thinking about sellers' privacy rights .

It is reported that the sellers were not informed of the change in the eBay platform in advance. One seller commented: "I have no idea when eBay started to publish my sales data." This week, many sellers expressed dissatisfaction with eBay's behavior, believing that the disclosure of this data violated their privacy rights.

Some sellers said that their publicly available data would change. On Monday, the eBay website showed the sales of their products; on Wednesday, it began to show the sales of their products. Moreover, eBay did not mark the time period of these data. Sellers can infer the time period of these data through their own sales, but consumers have no way of knowing.

There is no announcement about this change on the eBay website yet, so there may be many sellers who are unaware that eBay is making their sales data public.

One seller raised this question during the eBay weekly chat on Wednesday , asking why eBay added their sales data to the store homepage. The seller also wrote: "In my opinion, eBay takes buyer privacy very seriously . Therefore, I hope eBay can let sellers choose whether to make their sales data public, rather than disclosing it directly on the website page."

In the subsequent discussion, the eBay moderator clarified several points: first, the sales data displayed on the page is the total since the product was sold on the eBay platform; second, the data is the sales of a single account of the seller, not the sum of all accounts owned.

eBay's move to release sellers' sales data can indeed improve consumers' shopping experience to a certain extent. However, it is somewhat "unkind" to make such an important update without informing sellers in advance.

eBay

Policy Updates