EBay for Dummies (61 page)

•
Save My Page:
Saves your About Me page so that you’re one step closer to publishing it on eBay.

•
Edit Using HTML:
If you know HTML code, you can customize your About Me page. (For example, you can insert pictures with the code I give you in the “Multiple pictures in your descriptions” sidebar, earlier in this chapter.)

•
Start Over:
Takes you to a link page where you can delete what you created and begin again.

9. When you’re happy with your masterpiece, click the Save My Page button.

Yes, you did it; now anybody in the world with access to the Internet can find your personal About Me page on eBay.

Don’t forget to update your About Me page often. A good About Me page makes bidders eager to know more about your auctions. An out-of-date About Me page turns off potential bidders. If you choose to update, you need to edit it using HTML. If you don’t use HTML, you have to create a whole new page.

You can link to your About Me page from your Web site or from your e-mail because all About Me pages have their own personal URLs. The address ends with your user ID. For example, here’s the URL for my page:

members.ebay.com/aboutme/marsha_c

Blog on Your My World Page

If blogging is the key to the new Web, your My World page is the hub of your eBay user interaction. Your About Me page is there for customers; the My World page is mostly used by the eBay community. People like to know about other people, and the My World page shows your world, your way.

Although my editors would love for me to give you a long, drawn out, step-by-step list to show you how to get to your My World page, I won’t. It’s all too simple: Just click your user ID on your My eBay page (or any page for that matter) and you’ll arrive at your own (ready-to-fill-out) My World page.

Once you get there, you see a page ready to edit. Here’s the lowdown:

Edit image:
By clicking here, you’ll come to a page that allows you to automatically upload a picture from your computer or use one of the handy (but unexciting) eBay-supplied avatars (faux pictures) to appear on your My World page.

Items for sale:
Choose which and how many of the items you have for sale to show on your page.

Add content:
Add things about your eBay life that you’d like everyone to see.

Favorites:
Select if you’d like the page to pick up your favorite searches, sellers, and stores, and show them here.

Bio:
This link takes you to a form where you can write a quick and simple bio.

Neighborhoods:
Once you get going on eBay, you might just want to join a neighborhood, which is a special interest group. I am a member of Coffee Lovers (11,656 members), Photography (3,544 members), and Star Trek (364 members — hey, everybody needs to escape reality now and then).

Reviews and guides:
If you’ve written reviews of items on the site, or written a guide on how to do something (anything), you can have these reviews appear on your My World page.

Guest Book:
Use this feature to enable people to leave you messages on your page. Visit my My World page at

http://myworld.ebay.com/marsha_c

to view some of the comments left by other eBay users, as pictured in Figure 14-6.

Part IV

Even More of eBay’s Special Features

In this part . . .

So you want to protect yourself from bad apples, not just on eBay but all over the Internet? You’re not alone. I want to keep safe as well, and that’s why I’ve tipped you off to the information in this part.

This is the place to come if you want to know just what eBay knows about you and is willing to share with other eBay members. I also introduce you to the Security Center (Trust & Safety), the next best thing to a superhero when it comes to protecting you from people who don’t qualify for the eBay User of the Year Award.

eBay is a community, so you need to be let in on some of the ways you can commune with other collectors and get into the social scene. In this part, you find out about the special features that make eBay such a unique environment. Where else can you buy an item you really want and also help out a charity, all with the click of a mouse?

Chapter 15

Privacy: To Protect and to Serve

In This Chapter

Digging up what eBay knows about you

Determining how safe your information is on eBay

Finding out what eBay does with your info

Protecting your privacy

On the Internet, as in real life, you should never take your personal privacy for granted. Sure, you’re ecstatic that you can shop and sell on eBay from the privacy of your home, but remember: Just because your front door is locked doesn’t mean that your privacy is being protected. If you’re new to the Internet, you may be surprised to find out what you reveal about yourself to the world, no matter how many precautions you take. (Yes, we all know about that neon green exfoliating mask you wear when you’re bidding . . . just kidding . . . honest.)

In this chapter, you find out how much eBay knows about you and who eBay shares your information with. I explain what you can do to protect your privacy and tell you some simple steps you can take to increase not only your Internet privacy but also yourpersonal safety.

What eBay Knows about You

The irony of the Internet is that although you think you’re sitting at home working anonymously, third parties such as advertisers and marketing companies are secretly getting to know you.

While you’re busy collecting Winter Olympic memorabilia and buying that hot new Dooney Burke purse, eBay is busy collecting nuggets of information about you. eBay gets some of this information from you and some of it from your computer. All the data eBay gets is stored in the mammoth eBay memory bank.

What you tell eBay

eBay gets much of what it knows about you
from
you. When you sign up, you voluntarily tell eBay important and personal information about yourself. Right off the bat, you give eBay these juicy tidbits:

Name

E-mail address

Snail-mail address

Phone number

Your date of birth

Password

“Okay, that’s no big deal,” you say, but if you’re using your credit card to settle your eBay fees (or using PayPal), you’re also giving out the following personal financial information:

Credit card number

Expiration date

Bank account number

Credit card billing address

Credit card history

Don’t worry about giving this information to eBay or PayPal. The bottom line is that
every time
you pay by check or with a credit card in the real world, you give away personal info about yourself. eBay carefully locks up this information (in a high-tech Alcatraz, of sorts), but other companies or individuals may not be so protective. Before you put a check in the mail, make sure you’re comfortable with where it’s going.

What cookies gather

Web sites collect information about you by using
cookies.
No, they don’t bribe you with oatmeal-raisin goodies. Cookies are nothing more than tiny files that companies (such as eBay) put on your hard drive to store data about your surfing habits.

Most Web site designers install cookies to help you navigate their sites. Sometimes the cookie becomes sort of an “admission ticket” so that you don’t need to register every time you log on.

eBay has partnerships with companies that provide page-view and data-tracking technology and advertisers who display advertising banners on eBay pages, whether you want to see the banners or not. If you click a banner, a cookie from that particular advertiser
may
go onto your computer, usually to prevent you from seeing it again.

Cookies can’t steal information from other files on your computer. A cookie can access only the information that you provide to its Web site.

DoubleClick, a major player in the cookie-tracking field, says that it uses your information to limit the number of times that you see the same advertisement. DoubleClick also measures the kinds of ads that you respond to and tracks which member Web sites you visit and how often. The bottom line is that DoubleClick is just trying to sell you stuff with ads based on your personal interests. The upside is that you get to see stuff that you may like.

You can find out more about cookies at
www.cookiecentral.com/faq
. This site gives you simple instructions on how to handle cookies on your computer.

If you want to keep your information private, you can remove yourself from the DoubleClick cookie system by going to this Web site:

http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx

Your eBay sign-in cookie

There are two types of cookies:

End of session:
This cookie type remains on your computer as long as your browser is open or, in the case of eBay, for 24 hours. When you close your Internet browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or Opera) the cookie disappears as if you downed it with icy cold milk.

Permanent:
This flavor is perfect if you don’t share your computer with anyone else; it permits your computer to always remain signed in to a particular Web site. (eBay does not use this sort of cookie).

When you visit eBay and sign in, eBay gives you an end-of-session cookie.

eBay’s
“keep me signed in”
sign-in cookie is a good thing. It prevents the previously repetitive task of typing your user ID and password at every turn. This cookie simplifies your participation in chats, bidding, watching items, viewing e-mail addresses, and so on. Because you don’t have to sign in every moment that you’re doing business on eBay, it’s a real time-saver.

Web beacons

Web beacons
are clear, 1-pixel-by-1-pixel images that are placed in the HTML (or Internet page code) for individual pages. They are also commonly called
pixel tags.
Web beacons, like cookies, are used mainly for collecting marketing information. They track the traffic patterns of users from one page to another.

Web beacons are also often used in e-mails. Ever wonder how someone knows if you’ve received an e-mail? Or that you may receive an e-mail from a company whose Web site you’ve just visited? Blame the sneaky but harmless beacons.

Web beacons are invisible as cookies and are incorporated into Web pages without your knowing. Turning off cookies on your browser won’t disable beacons, but this action protects your anonymity. Web beacons are not as ominous as they may seem because the information collected is not personally identifiable; they just track your passage along the site.

What Web servers collect

Every time that you log on to the Internet, you leave an electronic trail of information, just like Hansel and Gretel. eBay, like zillions of other Web sites, uses
servers,
which are immense programs that do nothing but collect and transfer bits (and bytes) of information day and night. Your Internet connection has a special address that identifies you to all servers when you surf the Net. This is called an IP (Internet Protocol) address and is often used by law enforcement to track those whose shenanigans wreak havoc on Web sites or other users.

Web servers all over the Internet track some or all of the following information:

What Web site you came in from

The ISP (Internet service provider) that you use

The items that you’re selling on eBay

The Web sites you linked your listings to

Your favorite Web sites (if you link them to your About Me page)

eBay collects the following information while you visit the eBay site. After you log off, the server discards the data:

What you do while logged on to the site

Which categories you tend to browse

Which items you’ve viewed recently

What times you log on and log off

Like incredible Internet archivists, eBay’s servers keep a record of everything you bid on, win, and sell, which is great news if you have a problem with a transaction and need eBay to investigate. Also, eBay couldn’t display feedback about you and other users if its servers didn’t store all the feedback you write and receive. Have you ever sent an e-mail to eBay? eBay’s servers record it and keep it in some murky recess of eBay’s memory. Remember, we live in the age of electronic commerce, and the people on eBay run a serious business that depends on e-commerce. They have to keep everything in case they need it later.

To see a chart on what personal information is accessible by third parties, check out this address:

pages.ebay.com/help/policies/privacy-appendix

Be sure to visit the page; you may be shocked by the amount of information that exists on the eBay servers about you and your habits.

For current examples of how this type of information can be used against you as you surf the Internet, visit this Web site:

www.anonymizer.com/consumer/threat_center/

Cookie removal-ware

I got a call from a friend who complained that her laptop computer was getting slower and slower. She brought it over to my house and when I had a look at it, I also noticed that it was opening extra pop-up windows and accessing the Internet spuriously. After checking to see whether she hada virus (no, she didn’t), I went to the Internet to get her spyware removal software. Perhaps her problem was that too many people had inserted information-gathering cookies on her computer.

That was certainly the case. After installing and running the software, I found that she had over 350 cookies pulling information from her computer as she surfed. Once deleted, her computer ran much faster.

She certainly didn’t give these people permission to spy on her comings and goings on the Internet. These cookies were placed on her computer without her knowledge. If you want to purge these uninvited spies from your computer, download any of the free spyware or malware software from the Internet. Two good free ones are Ad-aware from
www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware
and Spybot Search and Destroy, available from
www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
.

If you’re apprehensive about all the information that Web servers can collect about you while you innocently roam the Internet, I understand. But before you start looking out for Big Brother watching over your shoulder, consider this: On the Web, everybody’s collecting information.