How do protect my identity when bidding. Private bidding option!

[terrynanook]

How do protect my identity when bidding. Private bidding option!

[femmefan1946]

Well, unless your real name is "Johnny Good4abuck" you pretty well have protected your identity, eh?

Just don't tell any nosy family members your ID, and certainly not your password, and you're good.

Many sellers will cancel bids from buyers with "private" IDs, because they cannot judge the safety of the transaction without seeing FB  left or received.

[hereiam87]

Bids are visible to the Seller ONLY. If I was bidding against you,I would look like this (p***t), and you would look the same to me.

P.S. The above scenario plays out when you click on 'bids' on an auction, or 'items sold' in a listing.

]:)

[dmil8030]

Hello 'good4abuck',

All ebay IDs are somewhat protected in auctions because of the way the ebay system picks 2 of your ID letters and three *s.  So whilst you see your own whole ID, others only see a partial.  The same way everyone else looks like x***y to you.  You can see for yourself by viewing the bid history of an item you've bid on when you are logged out.

If you want to make your feedback private (not a great idea, but around Christmas people want to keep the kids from snooping) the following link tells you about that.  Only buyers can have private feedback.  Sellers need to have their feedback viewable, - understandably:

http://pages.ebay.ca/help/feedback/profile-public-private.html

If, however, you are referring to those auctions which say "private bidders, identities protected", - the seller has set up the auction that way.  Everyone appears as a 'private bidder' to everyone else except themselves.  Setting up listings that way is also not a great idea, but not surprisingly there are people who will do that, too.  This next link will tell you all about that, if you wish to see:

http://pages.ebay.ca/help/sell/private.html