eBay, Inc

In recent times I've become increasingly attracted to eBay for more and more of my online purchases: clothes, shoes, computer bits; with a bit of effort I was able to get a lot at really good prices.

But one thing struck me this weekend as inherently wrong about the bidding system: why are the identities of the bidders open for everyone to see? I can understand why the seller should be able to see the member names of the potential buyers in order to help try to weed out phoney bids, but for people completely unconnected with the auction to be able to see the member IDs is rather strange.

Yes, I have occasionally researched competing bidders on some items to try to guess their bidding strategy (or whether they were interested at all), but -- naturally -- new bidders so often win anyway, so it rarely pays dividends.

But the disclosure of bidders IDs to everyone leaves the door open to fraudulent attempts at Second Offer Option emails from unconnected parties, such as I received on Sunday and friends have received before.

Given the general mistrust of auction sites and eBays constant struggle to portray themselves as a secure, safe way of buying online to the wary public, why do they disclose more information than is necessary? I doubt it's a law that requires open auctions; so why? why? why? I hope to find out soon.