Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/07/08

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Re: Perhaps more reason to avoid ebay
From: Martin Howard <mvhoward@mac.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 17:42:18 -0700

Eric wrote:

> That's ebay's policy.  Why wouldn't it be legal?  If the police knock 
> on
> your house without a warrant, you are free to invite them in and let 
> them
> look around.

Yeah, but imagine you're sharing a house with someone else: a friend.  
The police knock on your house without a warrant, you invite them in, 
and show them your friend's room, their correspondance, the binders 
with their financial statements...

Or you're staying in a hotel.  Someone faxes the hotel and gets a fax 
back from the concierge with your home address, telephone number, the 
license plate of the car you parked outside, the number of the credit 
card that you used to pay the room, and a list of phone calls that 
you've made from there.

The thing that bothers me about eBay's (and, it would seem, other 
Internet companies) practice is that in their fervour to appear 
cooperative with law enforcement, they appear to be leaving themselves 
wide open to exploitation by other individuals posing as law 
enforcement officers attempting identity theft.

Given that identity theft is one of the things that has struck eBay 
particularly hard recently (fake auctions, often antiques) one would 
think that they would exercise a little more caution in these matters.

M.

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