According to a recent report by two New York University researchers, a loophole within eBay could expose details about sensitive customer purchases, such as at-home medical tests.
Specifically, the potential problem is with eBay’s “Feedback as a Buyer” page, where sellers can leave feedback for buyers that is accessible from every eBay user’s profile page. This section is public, and sellers leave a record of their user name and the time of sale.
As reported by Internet Retailer, eBay doesn’t disclose the purchased item. However, a customer could visit the seller’s feedback page and match a sale’s time stamp to identify what was bought.
“While compiling data on purchasers of pregnancy or at-home HIV test is useful to a fairly limited group—perhaps advertisers or pharmaceutical companies—assembling a database of those who have purchased gun accessories may have considerably more impact,” explained Tehila Minkus, one of the researchers.
The researchers explained that in some cases, they were able to figure out even more information about particular buyers. For example, they linked 17 percent of the 131,000 eBay user names in one database back to those consumers’ Facebook profiles.
While eBay has been notified by the researchers, and even given pointers on how to fix the changes, the news source reported that the changes have yet to be made.
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