Forum

Why & How Does AUCTIVA Get Our Private Email Address?
 

Hi,

Am new here. Have a question/gripe:

We bid on an ebay item & won; they had used Auctiva services. Now we find not only emails from ebay and the Seller but also from Auctiva.

WHY and HOW does Auctiva get our private email address, and WHO (ebay or the seller or both?) is giving it to them?

We bend over backwards (causing severe back pain!) to keep our email addresses private and then we find ebay, PayPal, & Auctiva not only getting our email addresses but plying us with unwanted spam. Why and how?

Does eBay *OWN* Auctiva? Does eBay think they can spam us and share our private info this way, IN SPITE OF their pretenses of protecting our privacy?

SHEESH!

:(

justme, just relax :)

Auctiva is not owned by eBay in any way, shape or form. Auctiva is completely a 3rd party tool, but it integrates itself into whoever's account uses it quite deeply. This means your email address would have been transmitted from the seller to the Auctiva tool automatically when you won the listing.

What's with that authentication cookie that's shared when you first sign up? Is there any information that Auctiva gives to Ebay other than just what it needs to host the auction? You said they're a 3rd party, but I've never understood why they need that cookie if not to share information with ebay. Can you explain?

I've never actually used Auctiva myself, so I'm not sure what this authentication cookie is. I just know that we (ebay) don't own Auctiva at all. Auctiva does provide a lot of functionality for the user though, such as auto hosting, delayed listings, etc etc. And it has a whole checkout service and such. So I'd imagine that it collaborates (is that the right word?) pretty deeply with the seller's account. I don't believe they give any information to eBay directly though.

Interesting. Ok, thanks :)