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EBay is either a scheming marketing company or an innocent victim of mass paranoia launched by a well-intentioned e-mail it sent to its users.
The truth may be out there, but no one seems to agree on what it is -- except that the seminal auction site has committed a serious PR blunder.
And so the debate rages on over whether companies should be allowed to act according to their own benefit, if they should give users a fair chance to opt-out of marketing plans, or if they should instead be legally required to strictly protect their users' privacy above all else.
As reported Tuesday, eBay sent an e-mail to some of its users stating that a software glitch may have caused the incorrect recording of users' responses to marketing permission questions.
EBay said it was "fixing" the problem by changing the responses to "yes" and asked users who disagreed to re-enter the correct preferences on the company's website.
Privacy advocates and some eBay users screamed foul, accusing the company of engaging in a nefarious marketing scheme to bolster its mass-marketing offerings and abilities. But many e-commerce promoters said that eBay hadn't done anything wrong.
"It's tough to explain dysfunctional corporate decision making, but the cause here seems just a typical case of an avaricious marketer bent on improving his numbers telling an airhead PR flack to put a sugar coating on a communications laxative pill," said Jason Catlett of privacy advocacy website Junkbusters.
"The result is dazzling in its stupidity and its effrontery: 'Sorry, our previous decision not to spam you was an administrative error. We sincerely regret having temporarily respected your privacy and promise that it won't happen again,'" Catlett added.
Some users were so flabbergasted by the auction company's missive that they suspected it was actually a hoax hatched by crackers.
Others, upon duly visiting eBay's site to change their preferences back to "No" were further outraged by a message they got, stating that "changes to your preferences may take approximately 14 days to be reflected in our communications to you."
"Does this mean that I have to spend 14 days in the 'send me spam' zone?" wondered one eBay user in an e-mail sent to Wired News.
"If so, I could have just left my preferences set to yes, because two weeks on marketer's lists means I'll be flooded with crap mail forever more."
EBay spokesmen and customer service representatives hastened to assure users that no one would be placed on or off any marketing lists until a 14-day waiting period had passed.
But some weren't convinced. One user reported the receipt of an e-mail from eBay, with a scrap of text that the sender had neglected to remove.
The message read, "Here's another complaint from the preferences campaign," leading some to believe that the eBay action was part of an organized campaign to add more names to its marketing lists.
"Personally I find it curious why they would call it a 'campaign.' Says something about how they are approaching the situation," said Tero Paananen, an eBay user, in an e-mail to Wired News.
Kevin Pursglove of eBay explained that the text in question originated from the company that eBay hires to handle bulk e-mail, and said that the company refers to every job as a "campaign."
"I think that common sense is falling by the wayside here," added Pursglove, in response to media coverage of the issue.
Pursglove pointed out that if eBay "had actually been trying to do something sinister" the company "certainly would have not sent e-mail informing members" that it was changing their marketing preferences.
Admitting that there had been some confusion over the wording of the e-mail, Pursglove also said that of the 600,000 eBay members who had received the e-mail, only 4 percent had so far opted to change their marketing preferences back to "No" on eBay's website.
"As of today, 96 percent of our users have either opted to leave the settings turned to 'Yes,' or have not yet replied. This is in line with the community average, where 94 to 95 percent of users have chosen to receive e-mail from us and our partners," Pursglove said.
Pursglove believes those figures justify eBay's concern that the software glitch might have caused people's preferences to be wrongly represented.
Pursglove also noted that eBay had consulted with user focus groups and privacy organizations such as TRUSTe before proceeding with its action, and although some users did raise questions about whether users' preferences should be set to "Yes," the majority approved.
TRUSTe, an Internet-based privacy advocacy association, also was in favor of the action, said Pursglove.
Dave Steer, director of communications for TRUSTe, said that as the action was first presented to TRUSTe, eBay "seemed to be having more of a customer service issue than one dealing with privacy."
"Our concern over privacy was, for the most part, allayed with the assurance that no information would be shared with third parties. It now appears, however, that there are some legitimate privacy concerns, specifically surrounding choice," Steer said.
The bottom line, said Steer, is that the "choice bar" should not continue "to be raised and raised and raised."
"We will be looking closely into this matter over the next few days, as we hold discussions with eBay and help resolve user complaints."
In response to the allegations that have appeared on some Internet message boards that eBay's mailing was a blatant move by the company's marketing department to pad the company's send-spam lists, Steer said he didn't believe that eBay deliberately set out to trick or confuse its users.
"I don't buy the conspiracy theory," Steer said. "While it makes for good headlines, nice controversy and interesting banter in chat groups, it is not likely. When it comes to privacy, eBay has a track record of doing the right thing."
Steer added that, as eBay serves as a role model for other websites, it will be important for the industry as a whole to learn the right thing to do in situations such as this.
Unfortunately, what the "right thing" might be has still not been determined.
E-marketing analysts say that no harm has been done. But privacy advocates see eBay's choice to reset defaults to "Yes" as another example of how Internet companies are not protecting their users' privacy as stringently as they should.
Andrew Shen, policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said, "It is clear that in this instance eBay had a distinct choice of whether the default should be yes or no to receive e-mail announcements for the recipients of its message. EBay chose yes but they could have chosen no."
"It's fairly clear that without legal guarantees of privacy, companies are given a lot of leeway to choose where the default should be for their customers. Experience has proven that letting companies always choose the starting point rarely results in the higher privacy default setting," Shen added.
Don Peppers, of management consulting firm Peppers and Rogers Group/Marketing1to1, believes that eBay's e-mail message to its users could have been a bit clearer.
"But I don't really have a lot of patience for the crybabies like the guy who said that this incident is going to drive him back to 'real world' shopping," Peppers said.
"Guess he never had a 'real world' TV commercial interrupt a show at the most exciting part. Maybe he never had a 'real world' Jehovah's Witness come to the front door, either. The cyber world is the real world, and it's not perfect."
Peppers firmly believes that if eBay had sent the e-mail to bolster its marketing list, "they'd have to be the lowest IQ marketers on the planet."
"I think a more logical explanation is that it was a simple software glitch, and that the marketers tried to make up for what they saw as a lost opportunity, but they did so in a less than customer-friendly way."
