Guided by eBay’s Impact team, with oversight from our Board of Directors and Leadership team, we integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters into the core of our business and embrace sustainable practices that reinforce our commitment to operating with integrity.
The Board’s Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee broadly oversees ESG issues and sustainability reporting, while the Board’s three other standing committees connect with leaders on specific ESG-related matters, including in connection with incentive compensation, ethics and compliance programs and risk management oversight. Our Chief Sustainability Officer guides the Impact team and works closely with Investor Relations, while our CEO, Jamie Iannone, sponsors our ESG Council of senior leaders. eBay Leadership Team members sponsor each of our impact goals.
This flow chart illustrates our integrated governance structure, using double-headed arrows to depict our two-way information sharing and feedback model.
We follow strict internal policies, alongside our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, to reflect our commitment to our community.
By connecting millions of sellers and buyers across the world, we strive to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit that resides within the community — and that includes ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities.
Visit our Investor Relations website for complete details on our corporate governance policies and practices.
In line with the United Nations and the International Labour Organization’s human rights principles, we aim to support, protect and promote fundamental human rights across our value chain. We continuously evaluate our Human Rights Policy Statement to include additional policy updates.
We are committed to complying with the spirit and the letter of the tax laws in all countries where we operate. We are also guided by relevant international standards, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Read our Global Tax Policy.
We expect our third party providers to abide by our Third Party Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, prioritizing performance, market competitive and transparent pricing, financial stability, risk mitigation and the ability to scale with our business.
eBay is committed to conducting business ethically with our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, maintaining safe working conditions and advancing social and environmental responsibility. With our supply chain management practices, we set a high bar with regard to:
We also look for opportunities to support the environment and recommerce by partnering with our seller community to refurbish and resell our used corporate devices and site operations equipment. Our product teams are continuing to extend this program with other sellers and corporate partnerships.
Like eBay’s purpose, the Government Relations team ensures economic opportunity is accessible to everyone through ecommerce.
Our global Government Relations team protects sellers from proposals that would make it harder to sell and compete in online commerce, including limitations to using online marketplaces in both the U.S. and the EU, ecodesign rules that lack adaptation to second-hand products and cumbersome tax reporting and waste management measures.
In 2022, eBay also supported legislation in the U.S. and the EU to make ecommerce safer and more transparent for consumers as well as landmark U.S. postal reform legislation that ensures U.S. Postal services are affordable, reliable and universal for all U.S.-based sellers. Additionally, we recently published our third annual Global Transparency Report to communicate our trust and safety policies and their enforcement.
eBay sellers are the key to enabling circular and sustainable commerce. We actively support a framework that will further empower the trade of non-new items, such as adapted product safety, labeling, design and waste regulations.
The eBay Security Center offers robust tools and resources to help buyers and sellers connect in a trusted marketplace. We also provide comprehensive information security and cybersecurity awareness training to all employees.
We are committed to maintaining the privacy of our users’ information. Our Global Privacy Office maintains a robust program that is in line with international standards and built upon eBay’s Privacy Principles, which provide users with a safe, secure and trustworthy experience.
Our policies are designed to protect consumers and provide clarity to sellers about what may or may not be sold on our platform and under what conditions.
We conduct internal testing to identify potential vulnerabilities to our technology infrastructure and information security management systems, and we engage third-party “ethical hackers” to test our systems in order to proactively remediate potential weaknesses. Security audits occur on an ongoing basis to ensure controls and protective technologies are safeguarding eBay’s systems.
Additionally, we conduct simulated phishing campaigns and provide specialized security training to support critical functions at eBay. The Board’s Risk Committee provides oversight of our policies and processes for mitigating privacy and information security risks.
We comply with the Cyber Security Framework of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the ISO 27032, ISO 27001 and ISO 27002 standards. We also embrace the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) as an opportunity to demonstrate and deepen our commitment to protecting our users’ data.
Our Privacy Principles and User Privacy Notice describe how we approach data privacy and outline how eBay collects, uses, shares and manages personal information. Our Privacy Center ensures transparency about the user data we collect, allowing users to easily access, update and make choices regarding their data.
We have also established a set of User Corporate Rules (also referred to as Binding Corporate Rules), approved by the Luxembourg National Data Commission. These Corporate Rules are our commitment to adequately protect users’ personal information globally regardless of where the data resides, and depending upon the user’s location, may provide additional privacy rights through the relevant privacy regulator or a court. eBay’s User Corporate Rules are available in 16 languages, and we continue to work in cooperation with all relevant European Data Protection Authorities to maintain and update these rules to reflect current practices and our corporate values.
We partner with over 68,000 active intellectual property (IP) rights owners registered through our Verified Rights Owner (“VeRO”) program, which was launched in 1998 and enables IP rights owners to report potentially counterfeit or otherwise infringing items on eBay. If an item is counterfeit or otherwise infringes a rights owner’s IP rights, eBay promptly removes the listing reported by rights owners as IP infringement, notifies the seller and reviews the seller account for possible enforcement action.
eBay has developed policies to address Prohibited and Restricted Items, Counterfeit Goods, Offensive Materials and other Intellectual Property infringements, as well as International Trading. Read more in our 2022 Global Transparency Report.
In 2008, we enacted a global ban on ivory sales and have continued to work with government agencies, NGOs, industry peers and eBay community members to enforce our Animal and Wildlife Products policy. In 2022, we blocked or removed over 350,000 listings that are prohibited under this policy.
We continue to collaborate with the world’s largest ecommerce, technology and social media companies as part of the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, committing to an industry-wide approach to stop wildlife trafficking online. We also work with the Wildlife Trafficking Alliance (WTA) to raise public awareness about the scope of the wildlife trafficking crisis, and we hosted a charity auction in 2022 to support the WTA’s efforts in stopping wildlife trafficking around the world.
In November 2022, we partnered with the World Wildlife Fund on an internal training event to raise awareness about wildlife trafficking and the important role employees can play in combating this issue.
We also continue to partner with other organizations like the Tonawanda Seneca Nation and the OBON Society to remove sacred artifacts like ceremonial medicine masks from our marketplace and attempt to reunite them with their rightful owners.
eBay proactively addresses illegal wildlife trade on their platform. In November, eBay employees joined WWF for a 24- hour event to surface violating content and discover new trends on the platform.
