seperis | signal boost: etsy: your glass dildo history is no longer private

Your Glass Dildo Buying History on Etsy Is Right Below Your Resume in Google - seriously. No, seriously. Etsy's done a Facebook and my God. I am so glad I do not a.) have an account there (I think?) and b.) did not buy any glass dildos if I had.

The de-privatization is apparently opt-out, so if you have an account, please to be going to check it. Real names are apparently visible, as is feedback history. Please read the article if you have an account and are concerned with privacy on etsy.

We need a Web Privacy newsletter for this kind of thing. Who's willing to start one? I'm getting nervous, no lie. I don't think I've used my real name in many accounts, but honestly, now I'm not sure.

Shit! Thank you for this!

::scurries::

I just called my mom to check with her friends, just in case, and got a callback immediately to send them the article. Just--yeah.

Yeah, I mean I didn't buy a glass dildo or anything, but I did go on an Etsy shame spiral a while back and bought a metric fuckton of hats.

Still, I don't want my purchase history blasted across the interwebz. Thanks again!

Maybe someone should set up a web_privacy comm here, so that members can post links to new privacy concerns?

Someone in your lj comments was like "shit, I don't want brick-and-mortar stores to do this, why would I want internet stores to?" and I think that's a point worth repeating. Like, do I want Piggly Wiggly to post a notice in the window that Sapote Realname Smith-McGee has bought nothing but tampons, beer, and Cosmo Girl this week? No. No ma'am, I do not. Just because it's Etsy doesn't mean it's a twee privacy violation.

OH GOD - I didn't think about it that way. I just thought, oh, they made a mistake and corrected it; not seeing "How do you make that mistake in the first place!?"

They have, apparently, changed this (though it's undoubtedly a case of shutting the door after the horse has left the barn): Rethinking Feedback

I was actually going to give them kudos for making it so all purchases are now private, period.

I thought it was a reasonable thing to do in a timely fashion - unlike a lot of other places on the 'net, recently.

But once something hits Google, it doesn't go away...for a very long time.

This is very true. And google is bad about removing stuff when you ask them.

Thank you for the link, that's helpful to know.

A Web Privacy newsletter/comm would be awesome. I would subscribe to that in a heartbeat. I mean I google my name every month or two*, but that's kind of the bare minimum, you know?

*I mostly get the announcement from the local newspaper about National Merit finalists and a whole bunch of whitebread types from the Bible Belt - that's what I get for having a common first name and being descended from Mennonites** - which on the one hand is comforting but on the other hand makes me paranoid about what I'm missing.

**Amish lite

I note that they appear to have changed things in reaction to the, well, reaction, but... way to alienate consumer confidence there, dudes.

OH MY GOD I am once again, SO GLAD I don't have a facebook. Jesus Christ, who thought this was acceptable?

Uuuuuuuuuuggggh.

We need a Web Privacy newsletter for this kind of thing.

SO SO TRUE OMG.

Reminds me of Amazon suddenly making all wishlists searchable over Google a while back. I used my real name on that. Not anymore.

Thanks for this! Went and changed it at once.

UGH. apparently they are doing some re-thinking due to the Ars article (http://www.etsy.com/storque/handmade-life/rethinking-feedback-12472/), but still. What is this insistence that everyone wants and needs to see everything about everybody from everywhere just because this is the internet? When I shop in meatspace I don't especially want my name posted up in shop windows, how can they think this is any different?

Sigh.

They just fixed it. All purchases are now private!

Etsy has responded to the concerns here: http://www.etsy.com/storque/handmade-life/rethinking-feedback-12472/

Found it when I went to check my privacy settings and saw my purchase history was now private.

This is why I use a new, separate gmail address for most of my online membership type things (you can auto set them to forward to a main address) so I can keep my main address relatively clean.

I like to use '+whoever' (where 'whoever' is a company name) after the bit before the @ symbol to keep track of who passes my email address on without my permission. I use this with pretty much every company I sign up to now.

I like knowing who to blame when I start getting more spam than usual.

Ooo, I like that.

*nods*

The thing is, this has been around for years in the sendmail implementation - the plus and everything after it is just ignored until the '@' is reached - but very few people seem to know about it or use it.

I only found out about it last year when a friend clued me in whilst I was ordering take-out online.

What a neat feature!

A lot of web forms used to reject it, saying that the + is not valid in an email address, though. So you can't always use it, useful as it is! It was in pretty widespread use back in the day -- most of my friends in the mid-1990s used it -- but fell out of use with a lot of folks because of bad web form verification.

Your experience makes me wonder if the verification has gotten less stupid since last I tried it!

This is unfortunately true. I think I've only ever come across one form that didn't allow me to use it though.

I guess it depends where you're signing up as to how much mileage you can get out of it.

So if you sign up, I would just put in sampleemail+etsy @ mail whatever and that would show up as who they're sending the email to? (As an example, of course, but with whatever site it was.)

Sorry, I just find this idea handy and I want to make sure I'm understanding it right :D

edited at: Date: 2011-03-16 02:34 am (UTC)

Easiest way to explain:

I sign up at ESPN for a newsletter. I put random+espn@whatever.com as my email address.

A while later, I get lots of spam and unsolicited emails. I check the header of the email and find that these emails were sent to random+espn@whatever.com

Because mailservers ignore the +whatever, I get all the mail as if the person had typed random@whatever.com. But it basically allows me a tag, so I know that all this unsolicited crap was as a result of EPSN passing/selling my email address on to third parties.

At which point, I can make my displeasure at having my information passed/sold on known to the company that did it.

I will point out one thing I'd forgotten about though - some webforms might refuse it, saying '+' isn't a valid email address character. So watch out for that. This is definitely where a trash email account is handy.

edited at: Date: 2011-03-16 03:02 am (UTC)

thanks for letting me know!

I heard about this elsewhere and some of the people I know who sell through Etsy are basically looking elsewhere for places to sell their stuff.

"I don't think I've used my real name in many accounts, but honestly, now I'm not sure."
I opened a Facebook account last week. Didn't want to, but my favorite authors left MySpace to go there. Definitely not under my real name and with a new email I won't use for any kind of money transaction. Paranoia is the only way to survive on the web.

My Facebook account is under my iPod Touch's name. Before that, I was a cartoon character I liked the name of... and was easy to type. :)

I have an email account that gives my real name as sender and it only gets used for personal, family stuff. It's not getting much use these days and I'm considering deleting it.

Also, this is why I only buy my glass dildoes and anal toys from brick and mortar stores. Call me old fashioned...

Oh, for fuck's sake!

How stupid are these companies?

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