If you shop on Etsy you might want to keep your purchases private for some reason.
Etsy doesn’t share sales information directly, but there are some ways that people can figure out what you bought. These include looking at reviews, looking at your computer at your house, sellers potentially sharing information about you on their social media, and someone going through your personal email or credit card bills.
Read on to find out how to prevent these things from happening.
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Does Etsy post your purchase history anywhere?
Etsy doesn’t directly share any information that link customers to sales on the platform. They won’t even show sellers statistics about traffic to listings unless there’s enough to disguise who searched for what search term to get to a listing.
Your purchase history is only accessible through the logged-in account’s purchases and reviews section, and it’s permanent in your profile.
Deleting your Etsy account is the only way to remove it. So even though Etsy won’t publicly reveal your purchase details, accessing your personal account allows others to see your buying history.
What happens if you leave your account open and someone in your house looks at your shopping history?
If someone in your household has access to your logged-in Etsy account, they can see your purchase history and reviews without an extra login.
To prevent this, remember to sign out each time you leave the site.
Additionally, if you have public favorites, anyone can view them, whether signed in or not.
To maintain privacy, consider setting your favorites to private, especially when creating gift shopping lists.
I wrote another article about privacy on Etsy in general that talks about this kind of thing, and you can read that here: Privacy Settings On Etsy.
Can people see the reviews that you left for a product?
Etsy reviews are always public, revealing your purchases.
If you’re an Etsy seller and you want to keep your buying activities private, don’t leave reviews.
Remember, once a review is posted, Etsy doesn’t provide an option to hide it, and removal requires reaching out to Etsy support.
To maintain general purchase privacy, don’t review items in public settings to avoid the hassle of removal requests.
For an article about how to review something on Etsy, click here, but remember that it will be public: How To Leave A Review on Etsy
Sellers might share reviews on social media.
Public Etsy reviews are often used by sellers on social media, and Etsy actively encourages sellers to share our reviews.
Posting reviews directly from Etsy shares your username and profile picture on social platforms, because Etsy considers that fair use. Keep in mind that publicly posted reviews can be used for promotional purposes.
If you want to 100% avoid having your information shared, don’t a review.
To see the full Artisan Shopping Directory sections, including signups for discounts, click here.
Sellers might use reviews from Etsy on their own websites.
Sellers might also use reviews from Etsy on their own websites, since the reviews represent the service and product quality of their products regardless of where they were purchased.
Some people will do this and remove identifying names or use initials for customer privacy, but if the reviews are posted publicly on Etsy there’s already no expectation of privacy.
Sellers should usually try to be considerate of customers’ privacy and not use identifying information on anything, but you need to be aware that public reviews might be used for marketing purposes.
Other ways that people can see what you bought on Etsy.
When you buy something on Etsy, whether you’re registered or not, Etsy will send you a confirmation email, plus emails along the way as the package is shipped and delivered. To prevent anyone from seeing what you bought, you would have to prevent them from looking at your emails.
Etsy will send these even if you haven’t signed up for marketing emails, because this kind of email is considered to be transactional because it’s about one specific purchase.
Make sure that you don’t have your email open for nosey people to see what you bought if that’s a big concern.
As far as someone seeing the payment for the thing you bought, they could theoretically see your credit card bill, but that won’t show what you bought, just that you bought something.
How to (kind of) guarantee that people won’t see what you bought on Etsy.
If you want to almost guarantee that people can’t see what you bought on Etsy, you can check out as a guest. Guests can only leave reviews if they go back and register, then claim the previous purchases with that account.
Because there’s no on-Etsy link to guest accounts and purchases, and you don’t have to log in to purchase as a guest, the only way that someone would see that you bought something from Etsy would be to look in your email or on your credit card bills.
That’s why I say ALMOST guarantee…There’s no 100% perfect way to make sure that someone who’s really determined doesn’t go through your personal accounts.
Make sure to log out of everything, though, because that’s the best way to prevent people who are snooping to see what you’ve purchased online, whether it’s from Etsy or anywhere else.