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The Information Commissioner’s Office is to informally investigate internet auction website eBay’s data practices after receiving a complaint from a privacy lobby group.
Privacy International, the London-based group, is concerned about websites that make it overly difficult for users to delete their accounts.
After researching the issue, it has identified eBay, Amazon and Friends Reunited as some of these sites, but has praised YouTube and MySpace for the ease with which users can delete their accounts.
Although it hit out at Amazon for not providing any “delete account” facility at all, it decided to complain to the ICO specifically about eBay.
This is in part because of its size, with eBay’s UK user base at around 10m, but also because it is concerned that eBay’s privacy policy allows it to share user data with around 10,000 third parties under its VeRO programme in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement or other unlawful activity.
“We believe this blanket provision in eBay’s terms and conditions is disproportionate and possibly insecure, and we have also asked the Information Commissioner to investigate the nature of this relationship and the scale of disclosures of personal information to the programme’s members,” Privacy International said.

Posted: 09|5|06 at 6:51 am. Filed under: UK News.