[caption id="" align="alignright" width="200" caption="The Cannonball Factory in Hudson, where Etsy will be setting up new offices in the coming months."][/caption]Both Huffington Post and Salon are running stories about Etsy, the Brooklyn-based company that is setting up new offices in the Cannonball Factory building on Columbia Street in Hudson, and how the online vintage and craft marketplace recently sparked outrage after the site's buyers suddenly discovered that their feedback posts, purchases, user profiles and, in some cases, their real names had been made public and searchable. On Tuesday, March 15, Etsy "bowed to customers' demands and tweaked its privacy defaults," according to Huffington. Turns out, the story goes on, that the whole problem occurred innocently:

Last week the site rolled out a People Search tool, which let users search for other users by name. Designed to make Etsy more "social," the new search feature was intended to help users create "Circles" of friends, who could view one another's purchased and "favorited" items.


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Users' purchasing histories had previously been public on Etsy, but only sellers were searchable by name, writes Gothamist. The People Search feature apparently made everyone searchable--buyers and sellers alike.

Etsy CEO Rob Kalin and COO Adam Freed responded to the controversy in a post on the Etsy Blog this week. They wrote:

Were there changes to Etsy that made my purchases public? No. The issue here is our Feedback system, which has not changed in six years. We do not directly publish your purchases on Etsy. However, when a seller leaves feedback for an item you bought, or you leave feedback for an item you purchased, we would link to the item. Our Feedback system has always worked this way; our original thinking was that it's important to know more about the transaction, to better establish trust in the marketplace. We added the option to enter your real name when registering. Right next to this text field, it says: "Your full name will appear on your public profile. This is optional." Some people enter their name, some don't. As of right now, 25% of people (including us) have entered their real name. It is the confluence of these two things that led us to this position: if you enter your real name, purchase an item, and the seller leaves feedback for this item, this purchase will be publicly visible via our Feedback system. Search engines index our site, which means this data can turn up there, too. It's been this way since October... We believe that markets are conversations. We want people to discuss what they purchase, although this will often mean discussing it in private. As such, we have removed the link from a piece of feedback (which is public) to the item that was purchased (which is now private).

Later, the company added that Purchases and feedback will be private for both buyers and sellers. Sellers' feedback ratings will still be visible, as will a seller's feedback left for others. Etsy is also working to mitigate the damage done by the indexing of users' feedback in search, information that linked to details about users' purchases and personal information. "We are working to remove existing Etsy feedback pages from Google’s index. Feedback pages will not be indexed by Google and other search engines going forward," they posted.