Every day, millions of people worldwide come to eBay. We honor the trust our global community puts in us to maintain a secure platform.
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 oversee specific ESG-related matters, including in connection with incentive-based compensation, ethics and compliance programs, and audit and risk management oversight. Our Chief Sustainability Officer works closely with Investor Relations and chairs our ESG Council of senior leaders, sponsored by our CEO, Jamie Iannone.
Visit our Investor Relations website for additional corporate governance policies and practices.
This flow chart illustrates our integrated governance structure, using double-headed arrows to depict our two-way information sharing and feedback model.
Our policies, along with our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, demonstrate the expectation we have to operate in a way that protects and benefits our broader eBay community.
eBay was founded on the principle that people are basically good. For more than 25 years, we have focused on creating a better, more sustainable form of commerce, where people are empowered, causes are supported, and opportunities are open to everyone.
eBay is an ethical, transparent, and trusted company which complies with all applicable labor laws. We also strive to conduct our business in a manner consistent with the principles set forth in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the International Labour Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. The voices and perspectives of our employees are critical to eBay's business and to shaping our future. We respect the rights of our employees to choose to support, or not support, representation by a labor union, works council, or other employee organization. We are committed to bargaining in good faith with any such representative body established under applicable laws. We also aim to support and promote the protection of fundamental human rights across our value chain. These fundamental human rights include but are not limited to those regarding wages, working hours, health and safety, freedom of association, non-discrimination, harassment prevention, and the use of child, forced or bonded labor. Please see our Human Rights Policy Statement for more information.
eBay is committed to ethical business conduct and maintaining safe working conditions while advancing social and environmental responsibility. Accordingly, we expect our suppliers to abide by guidelines in our Third Party Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, as we build a more diverse supply chain and participate in recommerce.
The code applies globally and to anyone who does business with eBay. Third parties are expected to ensure their subcontractors acknowledge and implement the same standards of conduct. We set a high bar with regard to:
Additionally, we expect third parties will commit to developing, deploying, or using artificial intelligence (AI) in a manner that aligns with eBay’s recently established Responsible AI principles, which include accountability, fairness, transparency, privacy, reliability, safety, and security.
In 2023, eBay established a third party diversity benchmark using data from a certification supplier. The new benchmark enhances eBay’s impact measurements. We’ve also labeled our current suppliers in our SpendSmart system with their diversity certifications. This allows employees to easily see the diversity of suppliers when making business decisions.
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.
Our global Government Relations team works to protect sellers from proposals that would make it harder to sell online and compete in online commerce, including burdensome 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.
eBay was proud to support legislation in the U.S. to make ecommerce safer and more transparent for consumers, and works regularly with policymakers on solutions to preventing organized retail crime. Additionally, safe and efficient movement of goods around the world ensures that even the smallest of sellers reach the global marketplace. Our research shows that at least 93% of eBay small businesses in countries surveyed export to consumers in other countries.
eBay sellers are also the key to enabling a 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.
We are active with climate advocacy and lobbying groups, such as CERES and We Mean Business. In 2023, we participated in several campaigns on the national and state level including, but not limited to:
We honor the trust our community puts in us to maintain a safe and transparent marketplace. We recently published our latest Global Transparency Report in order to openly communicate our trust and safety policies and enforcement of those policies.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) evolved and improved dramatically in 2023. AI technology holds great potential for the future of ecommerce. With such rapid advancements, it is vital the technology industry, especially companies like eBay — with the size, scope, and personnel to guide the future of AI — ensure that applications follow core principles to guide responsible development and use.
Everyone at eBay has a role to play in Responsible AI. By taking care to build trustworthy AI systems, we are securing our customers’ trust that eBay’s AI is reliable and safe, with privacy and transparency at the forefront.
Our Responsible AI principles of Accountability, Fairness, Transparency, Privacy, Reliability, Safety, and Security ensure eBay remains a responsible steward of this emerging technology.
We champion the causes that matter to our community and take our customers’ privacy and security seriously.
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 align 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), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and other applicable privacy regulations. We use these standards to strengthen our commitment to customer privacy and data protection.
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. The Privacy Center also explains our Privacy Principles, offers answers to FAQs, and provides region-specific self-service guidance.
We have also established a set of User Corporate Rules (also referred to as Binding Corporate Rules), approved by the Luxembourg National Data Protection 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 100,000 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 a listing 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. These policies are designed to protect consumers and provide clarity to sellers about what may and may not be sold on our platform and under what conditions. Read more in our 2023 Global Transparency Report.
As a founding member of the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, we will continue to work to educate consumers and policymakers about the threats of illegal wildlife trafficking.
In 2023, eBay blocked or removed approximately 500,000 listings — 150,000 more listings than reported in 2022 — that violated our wildlife and endangered species policies.
eBay enacted a global ban on ivory sales in 2008, and we implemented new AI tools in 2023 that detect listings for elephant ivory.
Our efforts to stop illegal wildlife trade not only prevents the sale of endangered and threatened species, they also help prevent the spread of zoonotic diseases.
Buyers can support these efforts by learning how to shop safely to protect wildlife in the WWF Buyer Beware Guide.
eBay made great strides this year in finding new solutions to detect and deter wildlife trafficking on their platform, which can provide lessons for the sector to replicate. Finding a company so committed, transparent, and inspiring to work with is rare.
