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Cookies, web beacons, and your privacy
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We use cookies, web beacons, and related tools from third parties to provide features and services that improve your buying and selling experience. To help protect your privacy, we limit how these tools can be used on eBay.

How eBay uses cookies and web beacons

“Cookies" are small files placed on the hard drive of your computer. Most cookies are "session cookies," meaning that they are automatically deleted from your hard drive once you sign out from eBay or close your web browser.

We use cookies to provide features and services, such as:

  • Promoting and enforcing trust and safety

  • Allowing you to enter your password less frequently

  • Remembering your preferences

  • Presenting information that’s targeted to your interests

  • Measuring the effectiveness of our sites, services, content, and advertising

  • Facilitating conversation threads and other services on discussion boards (these cookies are placed by our board service providers)

  • Providing other services and features that are available only through the use of cookies

A “web beacon” is an electronic image placed in the code of a web page. We use web beacons to monitor the traffic patterns of users from one eBay page to another and to improve site performance.

Your choices about cookies

We offer certain features that are available only through the use of cookies. You are always free to decline cookies if your web browser permits. However, if you decline cookies, you may not be able to use certain eBay features, and you may be required to reenter your password more frequently during a session. Learn how to manage your cookies.

We use Flash cookies, which are cookies written with Flash technology, to help ensure that your account security is not compromised and to spot irregularities in behavior to prevent your account from being fraudulently taken over.

Use of cookies and web beacons by third parties

We may work with other companies who place cookies or web beacons on our websites. These companies help operate our websites and provide you with additional products and services. They are subject to confidentiality agreements with eBay and other legal restrictions. eBay does not permit any of these companies to collect personal information using cookies or web beacons on our websites.

DoubleClick, MediaPlex, and AppNexus are our service providers who use cookies to help us deliver our own content and compile anonymous site metrics and analytics. We require these companies to use the information they collect only to provide us with these services under contract.

We participate in cookie-based ad networks and exchanges operated by Yahoo, Tacoda, Blue Kai and Turn. Although these companies use some anonymous information about you to display ads, we don’t permit these companies to collect any personal information about you. Tacoda, Blue Kai, and Turn use cookies to collect anonymous information, which may be used to tailor the advertising you see on the eBay sites or elsewhere on the web. Yahoo uses some anonymous information we send them to display ads on our sites. Yahoo may also use anonymous information about its own users to select ads to serve on our pages. Click these links to learn more about Yahoo’s, Tacoda’s, Blue Kai’s, and Turn’s business practices and privacy policies, including how to decline participation in these programs.

We don’t permit third-party content on eBay (such as item listings) to include cookies or web beacons. If you believe a listing might be collecting personal information or using cookies, please report it to spam@eBay.com.

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