Oh Etsy , Etsy Etsy , what have you done ? Well , to lead off with , this : you innovate “ People Search , ” a new tool that makes your users ( and their feedback history ) searchable by their material names , without feed anyone any real head teacher up that you were doing so . Uh oh .
Basically , anyone whose real name is associated with their Etsy account — it ’s technically optional when you signalise up for the artistic creation and crafts - focused retail merchant , though it ’s not indicated expressly as such , so most people presumptively just type it in — and has left feedback for a leverage at any point is now pretty much guaranteed superfluity of some degree . And not just via Etsy ’s People Search but via Google , too . Take this particularly unfortunate examplefrom the Penny Arcade forums :
Oh god . I was looking for an example to give to a newsman that asked me for one , and I just found a cleaning woman who ’s Etsy profile arrive up on Google as the fifth link . I was expecting 6 or 7 page down , but it ’s on the very first page , right on after her on-line resumes ( four of ’em – so I imagine she ’s looking for body of work and this can not be helping ) . She sign up a year ago , under the honest-to-god secrecy policy , and has n’t logged in since 2010 .
And now I have it away what dildo she uses . Right down to the curvature and coloring .
Yikes ! I test it on myself and found that yes , indeed , my Etsy account and attendant purchase account were now part of my Google footprint . All of my vintage belt buy there for the man to see ( gratefully there ’s no style to tell from that purchase chronicle that I use the knock for weird sexual practice stuff and nonsense ) .
Mary Sue of TheMarySue.com hasa handy pathfinder to changing your visibility settingsand hide your invoice history , but let this be a lesson to us all : just because an on-line retailer is really twee and trades mostly in endearing knit hats that look like frogs does n’t mean they know how to protect your secrecy . [ Geekosystem ]
Update : Etsy , take down that this intrusion of seclusion has made their exploiter ’ heart feel sad , hasrolled back the raw search .
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