eBay

Is eBay safe?

As a place to buy, eBay is one of the safer marketplaces: payments go through eBay's own checkout, and its money back guarantee refunds you if an item never arrives or does not match the listing. Its app does not track you across other companies' apps, according to Apple's label.

The company's record is the problem. In January 2024 eBay paid a $3 million criminal penalty, the most the law allowed, after its own security staff stalked and harassed a couple who wrote a newsletter about it. The same month it paid $59 million to settle US claims over pill presses sold on its site. We score it 55/100, just above Amazon.

The cyberstalking case

In August 2019, eBay security staff targeted David and Ina Steiner, publishers of the trade newsletter EcommerceBytes in Natick, Massachusetts, because senior managers saw their coverage as critical. According to prosecutors, the campaign included deliveries of live insects, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig and a funeral wreath, threatening messages on Twitter, and staff travelling to Natick to watch the couple and fit a GPS tracker to their car.

Seven former eBay employees and contractors were convicted. Jim Baugh, the former senior director of safety and security, was sentenced to 57 months in prison in 2022. In January 2024 eBay itself was charged with stalking, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. Under a deferred prosecution agreement it admitted the facts, paid a $3 million penalty and accepted an independent compliance monitor for three years. The charges are dismissed only if eBay commits no crimes in that period. The Steiners settled their civil suit against eBay and its former chief executive in February 2026, according to the Boston Globe; the terms were not disclosed.

This case does not put your account at risk. It does matter for trust: the team that was supposed to protect customers was the one that broke the law.

Pill presses and other illegal listings

The second 2024 case is about what was sold on eBay. The Justice Department alleged that eBay did not verify buyers, keep records or report to the DEA for thousands of pill presses and encapsulating machines, which can make counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl. eBay paid $59 million and agreed to improve its compliance programme.

A separate 2023 complaint for the Environmental Protection Agency alleged that more than 343,000 devices to defeat vehicle emission controls had been sold on eBay, along with unregistered pesticides. A federal judge in Brooklyn dismissed it in September 2024, ruling that eBay was not the seller of the listed goods and that Section 230 shields it from liability for sellers' listings. The government appealed, then dropped the appeal in April 2025, so the dismissal stands.

For ordinary shoppers, the practical risks are counterfeits and unsafe electrical goods from third-party sellers. Check the seller's feedback and location, and prefer items with eBay's Authenticity Guarantee for watches, handbags, sneakers and trading cards.

Scams on eBay

Most fraud on eBay starts when someone pulls the deal off the platform. A buyer offers to pay by bank transfer, a seller asks you to email them directly, or a message that looks like eBay asks you to confirm a payment on another page. eBay's German buyer protection policy states plainly that any purchase where part of the payment was made outside eBay is not covered. The same rule protects sellers: if a buyer insists on paying another way, decline.

Phishing emails that copy eBay's design are the other big risk. Check messages in the app's own inbox. Anything urgent that arrives only by email or text, especially with a link to sign in, is probably fake.

What the app collects

eBay's Apple privacy label is lighter than some rivals because it has no "Data Used to Track You" section. The data linked to your account is still broad: purchase history, payment info, precise location, name, address, email and phone number, contacts, photos, search and browsing history, device IDs and advertising data. eBay uses search, browsing, purchases and location for its own advertising and recommendations. Diagnostics are collected but not linked to you. eBay's privacy notice also says it gets personal data from other sources, including credit agencies and data providers, and may place you in advertising segments such as age group and interests.

Was eBay hacked?

Yes, in 2014, which is outside our ten-year window for scoring but still worth knowing. eBay said attackers used a few stolen employee logins to reach a database with customers' names, encrypted passwords, email and postal addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth, and it asked every user to change their password. It said no financial data was taken. We found no comparable breach since.

Security has improved. eBay added authenticator apps as an option for 2-step verification in 2024, alongside one-time codes by text message, which eBay itself calls the less secure method.

How to use eBay safely

1. Turn on 2-step verification with an authenticator app rather than text messages.
2. Pay and get paid only through eBay checkout. Treat any request to pay another way as a scam.
3. Read messages inside the eBay app, not in links from emails or texts.
4. Report a missing or wrong item within 30 days of the delivery date, so you stay inside the guarantee.
5. For branded goods, buy listings with the Authenticity Guarantee.

How we scored it

Security (65) is eBay's strongest factor: no large breach in over a decade and good login options. The regulatory record (42) is the weakest, driven by the criminal stalking penalty and the $59 million pill press settlement. Neither was a privacy fine, which keeps it above Temu. Compare Vinted, a smaller second-hand marketplace with a GDPRGDPRThe EU's General Data Protection Regulation, which sets rules on how organisations collect and use personal data and allows large fines.More in the glossary fine, at 51.