Etsy exposing your shopping history and name

[branchandroot]

Signal boost, via telesilla:

Etsy, an otherwise very congenial person-to-person handcraft and buyables platform, has done a Beacon. They have exposed your shopping history and made you searchable by email or by name; your real name, address and other location/contact info is now listed on your profile, if you ever entered it (possibly under the mistaken assumption that it would remain private). You can set your favorites, shopping history, name, and email to Private in Account > Settings > Privacy, but every member has been, as of now, automatically opted in at the Public setting.

Personally, I think a very stiff note to the owners is in order. As soon as you've fixed your settings.

Comments

[yvi]

Wow. This already shows up first when searching for my RL name on Google.

[branchandroot]

Yeah, I think they did this a week and a bit ago, and it showed up /fast/ on the search engines. Including some really /personal/ stuff that I don't think most people wanted associated with their legal names in the top Google results!

Really not well-thought-out, Etsy.

[yvi]

And then I changed it to a made-up named and got the requets denied with

You recently submitted a change to your name on your Etsy profile. Name changes are reviewed by Etsy Admin and this request was not approved.

Name changes are most often not approved because the requested name appears to be a business name or shop name.

Etsy encourages the use of your full first and last name. This is not intended to be your business or shop name, but rather your personal name.

Making your real name public can help people you know in the real world recognize you on Etsy, and can establish credibility and inspire trust.

What the heck?

At leats that way I got to know that I can just delete the name from my profile.

[branchandroot]

O_O Okay, that's new. I heard complaints about slow turn-around on name changes, but not that they were being flat out denied. That's... really slimy when they've just finished scattering your information all over the net, and now they want to, essentially, force you to keep using your real information.

[krait]

Eeeergh. And here I've spent the last two weeks semi-seriously considering setting up on their site...

[branchandroot]

*sighs* Yeah, might want to wait this out and see if they learn better or not.

[jaebility]

Ugh, what a disappointment. I've been loving and using Etsy for years now - Feels like I've been tricked. Hopefully they make amends for this.

[branchandroot]

I know, it's been such a good site until now!