I know people who still wish for the uncomplicated days of the old eBay.

The days to which I’m referring are, of course, those that included a more open circuit of information between sellers, buyers and potential bidders. It was during that period when sellers, buyers and bidders enjoyed the same level of transparency- it was when bidders knew who they were bidding against and when sellers recognized potential customers even before any auctions were won.

Those days have been replaced with the present. The present now boasts privacy requirements that just sort of cramp everyone’s style. It’s been that way for about a year now.

There are uses for strict privacy on eBay, of course. When controversial stock comes into play, buyers may end up appreciating that bidder IDs are hidden from the world. There are a handful of situations in which keeping IDs private seems smart or even necessary.

But there are more instances in which potential buyers want accessibility to bidders’ information.

And I think it’s their right to have it.

The Beginning

Let’s start with the obvious. When a seller is new to eBay, he has to build a reputation from the ground up. That’s hard enough as it is. But cloaking information from view- any information- only arouses suspicions in prospects/bidders. If a seller specializes in expensive merchandise, the fire is fueled.

Bidders might ask themselves, “Who is this new seller and what are his intentions?” Those are valid questions. They’re also questions that are significantly more difficult to answer now than they were a year ago because of eBay’s privacy policies. Bidders are left in the dark.

We know that eBay implemented its latest privacy strategies to protect bidder information from con artists and even other aggressive bidders. Reports of inboxes flooding with fraudulent “second chance” offers was enough to set the idea of reform into motion. Nasty correspondence from other bidders just sealed the deal.

Regardless, the result is that bidder identities are now kept private and are only revealed after an auction has been won.

On the surface, that seems like a forward move on eBay’s part.

But the trouble is this:

Whereas potential bidders could once sniff out suspicious activity like shilling with some quick detective work in “bidding history” sections, today, it’s a lot harder. Asterisks conceal member names now and make it difficult for bidders to even identify themselves…much less a possible threat. It’s a tricky thing for eBay users who once found comfort in their ability to assess a bidding situation on their own and act accordingly.

Possible Fallout

When it was reported that the forecast of eBay’s future was dismal, I immediately wondered if that wasn’t, at least in part, due to the newly-implemented “privacy” measures.

It is possible, after all, to protect someone so much that they feel smothered or trapped. In this case, I thought that the problem might also have to do with eBay users feeling disempowered. They were stripped of their ability to examine bidder lists and bid histories and use common sense. In essence, they were being told to go on blind faith in an arena where trust is to be earned- not taken for granted.

Even before the bidder privacy protection idea was universally implemented across all of eBay, I saw resistance to the idea on a number of public forums. And, interestingly, most of it wasn’t coming from business owners. It was from the bidders themselves.

Business owners seemed to be the most relieved of the bunch. They thought the new policy would benefit them most, since they could guard themselves from possible loss of product and reputation.

The kicker?

When eBay’s Global Trust & Safety team first released information about the new policy, they defended it by saying that they had to “choose safety over visibility.” I remember smiling to myself when I read it, because of how ironic it sounded.

After all, “visibility” is something that every marketer worth his salt strives for. And “visibility” (in the sense of making bidders transparent on eBay) would only help businesses make money, since potential bidders could decide for themselves if they were entering a fair auction or not.

It appeared that the “safety over visibility” statement, initially intended to ease everyone’s fears, was in fact, threatening. The danger in it was that it toyed with the very thing that built eBay- democratic sales.

Masking bidder identity seems to have shaken that foundation, whether eBay wants to admit it or not.

I truly believe that those anonymizing asterisks are costing eBay and business owners dollar signs.

What do you think?

Did you see a significant drop in sales when all bidders suddenly became “anonymous”?