p2pnet.net News:- Amazon, Friends Reunited and eBay, “the largest and most successful UK commercial sites,” are breaking the law by making it difficult or impossible for users to delete personal details, says Privacy International (PI).

As a result, the British human rights group has made an official complaint to the UK Information Commissioner, demanding a formal investigation. “This will be a test complaint, and has been directed at eBay.co.uk, which claims a user base of over ten million UK consumers,” it states, saying it’s similarly investigating other sites across Europe, North America, Australia and Asia.

“Where appropriate, we will lodge complaints with the relevant Data Protection regulators,” it states.

Privacy International asked Net users to try to remove personal data on sites including eBay, Amazon and Friends Reunited and, “The research established that the vast majority of users of these sites were unable to delete their accounts,” says PI.

On some sites, with eBay mentioned specifically, users need, “intuition, good luck or dogged persistence” while on others, Amazon and Friends Reunited, for example, there doesn’t seem to be any way to delete accounts.

“We believe that these account deletion and disclosure arrangements – or their absence – breach key elements of the Data Protection Act,” says PI, going on:

“No customer could reasonably be expected to invest the considerable time and effort required to investigate these sites, nor in our view should any responsible company create such obstacles.

“In our view it is in these companies financial interest to hide the account deletion function, and thus they have acted in an entirely self-serving manner that denies millions of customers an important right.

“The size of an online company’s customer base is a key element of its market value. Maintaining growth of that customer base is therefore a core indicator of their financial worth. Obstructing the removal of accounts has the effect, intentional or otherwise, of artificially inflating the customer base at the expense of data protection rights.”

See below for Amazon.co.uk and eBay “case studies”.

Amazon provided the most blatant example of companies that refuse to provide account delete facilities.

Amazon collects information on your payments, search terms, emails, items purchased, and ‘information from other sources’. The Privacy ‘Notice’ states that the collected information on you may also be used by affiliated business they do not control, third party service providers, promotional offers and business transfers.

Under Amazon.co.uk, creating an account is relatively simple. Under ‘Your Account’, the main account administration page, the customer has almost complete authority over the account to change or even delete payment methods and wedding and wish lists. The name, email or password can be changed. You are also able to turn off the site’s ability to keep track of search history.

However nowhere on the site can a customer actually delete an account. A trawl through all the ‘useful information’ statements (’customer charter’, ‘privacy notice’ and ‘privacy policy’, ’security guarantee’ and even ’sign out from our site’) reveals nothing about closing your account, deleting your personal details, or terminating your relationship with Amazon. Even the site’s search function is useless for this: you can only search for products for purchase, not for information on how to manage your account. In fact, a search for ‘delete account’ even points to advertisements from ’sponsors’ on how to open bank accounts.

Case study Two – eBay.co.uk

eBay has become one of the Internet’s most successful brand names. eBay operates online sale and auction services in 33 countries and claims a worldwide customer base of more than 180 million people, with more than ten million registered users in the UK. eBay UK was launched in 1999 and by 2004, gross merchandise volume (GMV), the value of all successfully closed listings on eBay.co.uk, reached more than two billion pounds. eBay.co.uk has reported year-over-year GMV growth of 94%.

eBay presents a more difficult scenario, representing companies that do allow customers to delete their accounts, but which create substantial obstacles for doing so.

Internet users are able to freely browse the eBay site, but are required to register if they wish to sell or bid. Registration involves the collection of a range of personal information, including phone number, date of birth, address and mandatory bank account information.

The existence of a deletion facility is particularly relevant to eBay customers. eBay’s privacy policy states “Further, we can (and you authorise us to) disclose your User ID, name, address, telephone number, email address, and company name to eBay VeRO Programme participants under a confidentiality agreement as we in our sole discretion believe necessary or appropriate in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement or other unlawful activity.”

The VeRO Programme has membership of around 10,000 organisations and individuals. We believe this blanket provision in eBay’s terms & 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.

Having registered with eBay to research this complaint, we visited the “My Account” section of the site. This contains four sub-sections: personal information, addresses, preferences, feedback and subscriptions. None of these sections contains a facility to delete an account.

We visited the site’s “help” section, clicked “using my eBay”, and then proceeded to “Managing your account”. This too contained no information on account deletion.

We then conducted a series of site searches, using such keywords as “remove” and “delete”, but these searches resulted in query returns covering many pages. Assessment of these hundreds of search returns was impractical, if not impossible.

It was only by chance that we checked the site’s privacy policy, which states: “Upon your written request, we will deactivate your account, contact information, and financial information from our active databases. To make this request, please contact Customer Support.”

The “customer support” phrase links to eBay’s “contact us” page. However this page is of no practical use to anyone wanting to delete an account. The page contains a single option checkbox list for the following categories:

• Listing Policy Breaches
  

• Report a breach of an eBay listing policy or a prohibited item
  

• Buying and Finding
  

• Ask about searching, bidding, paying for an item, or dispute resolution
  

• Account Security
  

• Report fake eBay emails, unauthorized account activity, or other safety concerns
  

• My Account – Registration/Password
  

• Ask about My eBay and changing your contact information
  

• Selling and Managing Your Item
  

• Ask about photos, fees, tools, Shops, unpaid items or problems with a buyer
  

• Suspension
  

• Ask about a suspended account, notices you’ve received from eBay, or sign-in problems
  

• Feedback
  

• Ask about eBay’s Feedback system, or about feedback you’ve left or received

None of these categories explicitly or implicitly relates to account deletion.

Toward the end of this research we did discover a deeply buried direct link to a request box for account deletion. This involved visiting the “Help” section”, then clicking through “account information & billing”, then clicking through “managing your eBay member account, and finally to “closing your eBay account”, which in turn links to a request box.

We also discovered that the account deletion option could be reached by typing appropriate words into a search box in the Help section. However there are two search boxes on the Help page, only one of which will lead to the deletion link. Nine out of ten people attempting to delete their account did not consider using this method, and we therefore regard it as ineffective and burdensome.

Go here for a .pdf of the report.

Also See:
Privacy International – PI report on online privacy — Dumb Design or Dirty Tricks?, August 31, 2006

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