eBay's Proactive Approach Emphasized in Rob Chesnut's Trust and Safety Town Hall
Posted by Ninad on May 03, 2007 at 02:37 PM in General , Trust & Safety Corner | Permalink
If you saw Ryan's pictures from Monday's Trust and Safety Town Hall with Rob Chesnut, you know that Rob's team was out in force to answer questions from members. Although a technical glitch delayed the start of the Town Hall by a few minutes, a lot of ground was covered during the event, with Rob and his team responding to many questions that came in over the phone or via email.
In his opening remarks, Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America, framed eBay's revamped strategy towards Trust and Safety in the context of "taking a much more proactive approach." He said that the eBay Community may notice a new "aggressiveness" to our TnS approach, mentioning several recent projects like Safeguarding Member IDs, and the recent announcement that some new listings will not be made viewable for a few hours to give us more time to check them for potential fraud-related problems.
Bill noted that eBay had resisted these types of moves in the past, because of the impact that they may have had on the Community. "We don't like holding back information or reducing the visibility of a listing on the site any more than our members do."
So why are we doing these changes now? "The internet has simply changed in the last 11 years," Bill explained. Paraphrasing from my notes, Bill also explained that, "As internet technology has evolved, helping millions more people around the world to connect and transact online, the scammers, unfortunately have followed the trail. And what's more, they, too, have become more sophisticated in their methods and technologies."
One of the best weapons in eBay's arsenal to fight the bad guys online is the sheer experience and expertise of some of our people. One person who has both these qualities in abundance is Dave Cullinane, eBay's Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Bill introduced him to the Community for the first time in Monday's Town Hall. Dave brings over 35 years of internet security expertise to eBay. Before joining eBay he was the CISO for Washington Mutual.
Dave explained that industry-wide collaboration and best practice sharing is critical to the future security of the internet. "No business is immune, and it's up to us all to work together to share the latest threats with our counterparts, as well as with Law Enforcement." Recently, Dave hosted what he called a "Red team" event in which eBay invited some of the top security and industry experts to our corporate headquarters in San Jose, California, for a two-day conference to share experiences and insights on information security.
Rob Chesnut and his team were kept busy over the next almost 90 minutes as the questions poured in.
Many questions were about the recently announced changes to the Feedback system. Members wanted to know more details about the Detailed Seller Ratings. Brian Burke, eBay's Director of Global Feedback Policy, shared a lot of insights we had obtained from piloting the new Feedback system in some of our international markets (like the UK). He explained that data from the pilot markets indicated that there was a high adoption rate for the new feedback system, and buyers were actually taking the time to rate sellers using the DSRs.
In response to a question from a member who was apprehensive about eBay launching the new Feedback system so close to the upcoming USPS rate changes, Susan Geis from the Shipping team outlined some of the steps eBay had taken to help sellers make a better transition to the USPS rate changes. These included a better shipping calculator, and updates to Turbo Lister.
One of the callers was frustrated that her account had been suspended due to violations of our Verified Rights Owner Program (VeRO), but she wasn't sure exactly what she had done wrong. She wanted to know why eBay couldn't be more specific about what violations sellers may have actually committed. Rob Chesnut explained that, when a listing was in violation under VeRO, eBay often didn't know what the specific violation was. Rob added that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a rights owner doesn't have to provide detailed information about specific violations. He sympathized with our sellers but pointed out that some members of our VeRO program were more informative than others. Many VeRO members have more information about their intellectual property on their eBay About Me pages, and Rob urged sellers to review such information before listing.
Members also wanted to know how eBay works with Law Enforcement to prosecute scammers, what we're doing to curb excessive shipping (Bill revealed that by the first quarter of next year buyers will be able to sort search results by total cost - including shipping), and about the Safeguarding Member IDs project.
For more details of the Trust and Safety team's answers, keep an eye on the Town Hall archive page, which will soon be updated with a transcript of the Town Hall. You can also listen to an audio archive.
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