The other side to this whole question, if I may offer my opinion, is that transparency does make for what I call market or site-wide "cross-pollination". I'm sorry to see these features disappear. For all the "peeking" and snooping and phishing, I'm sure there was just as much spontaneous purchasing going on, as in: "Ooooh, that's nice, wow let's see what else that seller has".
By removing this feature, we sellers are now on our own, entirely dependent upon eBay's search/placement system (Cassini). The plugs have been pulled from all those other spontaneous connections. If you think about this, you may realize that this move might have had other motives on the part of eBay besides cleaning up bad behaviour on the site. I think it's one more way to separate buyers and sellers and force sellers to bend to Cassini et al.
As a buyer (and I often still do buy on eBay), I'm not happy either. It was helpful to be able to go down a list of a seller's recent transactions and take a look at the quality, price and type of items offered. That kind of peeking was useful.
I know that as a seller I must simply accept these changes, as much as I dislike them, and do what's necessary to adapt if I want to continue selling here, because it's eBay's site, eBay's gameboard, and eBay's rules. This isn't a democracy, or even a collaboration of any sort.
As I've said before, this step tells me how far the new eBay wants to distance itself from its laudable founding credo of an open marketplace.
