As you may know, I was roaming Silicon Valley last week, and on Friday, I landed at eBay (EBAY) — the "Whitman Campus," as the headquarters is now called. Seeing that tribute to Meg Whitman made me smile as I drove in. She built the company practically from scratch to $7.7 billion in revenues in only 10 years. Whitman retired as CEO in March. But on Friday, there she was back at eBay, popping in for a surprise party for general counsel Mike Jacobson, who was celebrating both his birthday and his 10th anniversary at the company that day.
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eBay has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regard to the payment methods sellers may advertise in their listings. While the new policy bans paper payments (beginning in October), sellers report hearing on the QT that they may accept checks and money orders, as long as they don't solicit such payments from buyers.
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A computer containing banking security details of more than 1 million people has been sold on eBay, bank officials said Tuesday - the latest in a series of losses of personal data in the U.K.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (nyse: RBSPRD - news - people ) acknowledged that a machine belonging to archiving company Graphic Data and sold "inappropriately to a third party" had information on credit card applications from some RBS customers and data from other banks. The computer contained account numbers, passwords, mobile telephone numbers and signatures.

"We take this issue extremely seriously and are working to resolve this regrettable loss with Graphic Data as a matter of urgency," RBS said in a statement.
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Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman gave away 200,000 shares of eBay stock last week, valued at about $5 million. In addition, she sold 37,500 shares for $948,277.51.

As a member of eBay's Board of Directors, Whitman is required to file notices of stock transactions with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but the names of recipients of stock gifts do not appear on filings.
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For eBay, it's always been about the Web. Since the online auction company's launch in 1995, its Web site has been virtually its sole point of contact with consumers. This summer, a group of students from Saratoga High School had the chance to rub elbows with and influence those who decide how eBay's Web presence should look and feel.

As part of the "Gen Y Study," three teams of budding Web designers worked with eBay's research lab professionals to design a new site that would appeal to today's youth.

Just before school ended in June, eBay put out the call to several South Bay high schools to enlist student design teams.

"EBay has often talked about the changes taking place in the marketplace, and the younger demographic that's now using our website," says Ekta Sahasi, an eBay program manager who conceived of the challenge. "We thought, `Let's check in with some younger people, give them a completely clean slate, and see what they come up with.' In this way we could see what we need to do to address the needs of that audience."

"We thought we'd get 10 people responding," adds Neel Sundaresan, senior director of eBay's research labs. "When we heard that Saratoga High School had 21 students interested, we were really excited."
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Banking customers' personal details sold on eBay

LONDON -

A computer containing banking security details of more than 1 million people has been sold on eBay, bank officials said Tuesday - the latest in a series of losses of personal data in the U.K.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (nyse: RBSPRD - news - people ) acknowledged that a machine belonging to archiving company Graphic Data and sold "inappropriately to a third party" had information on credit card applications from some RBS customers and data from other banks. The computer contained account numbers, passwords, mobile telephone numbers and signatures.

"We take this issue extremely seriously and are working to resolve this regrettable loss with Graphic Data as a matter of urgency," RBS said in a statement.

A former employee from Graphic Data sold a computer server used by the company on eBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ) without wiping the internal hard drive, said Nicole Morgan, a spokeswoman for MailSource UK, which now owns Graphic Data.

The buyer, Andrew Chapman, said he found the data when he looked at the machine's hard disk.

"I was appalled when I found the bank account information. That sort of thing shouldn't have been listed on there," he said. "It would have been possibly quite easy to find if you know something about computers."

The security breach became known when Chapman found the information and contacted authoriti ...