Did You Get Permission To Do That?

When a site wishes to integrate with another site, there are usually talks between the sites and permissions to be granted before such an activity takes place.

Seems that there has been an issue of not asking permission to ask ThePurseForum's members for their log in information - including their TPF password at Bags.Bonanza.com.

ThePurseForum put up a banner across their forum, below their header but above where you can read the threads for those Bonanza users who also use ThePurseForum. Bonanza is the parent company of Bags.Bonanza.com. Below is a copy of the banner (click it to enlarge it.)

Vlad & Megs of ThePurseForum acted quickly when they found Bags.Bonanza.com presenting its users with an option on their profile page to verify their PurseForum membership by providing Bonanza with their PurseForum username and password.

According to Vlad's original post, "This function on Bags.Bonanza.com is not authorized, sanctioned or supported by the PurseForum, its parent company and its owners."

Read more here: http://forum.purseblog.com/ebay-forum/attn-bonanza-users-635298.html

Below is a graphic of the link that users were seeing and the form where users would input their information.

Click the graphic to enlarge.They also advised their members about internet security in general.

Vlad & Megs are looking out for their members and the integrity of their site.
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Bill Harding, the founder of Bonanza, posted this into ThePurseForum alert thread in post 64 of the thread:

"Hey all,

So exciting to see our name in lights, if not under the exact circumstances I would have chosen! :)

Given the tremendous overlap between TPF users and Bonanza users, we had hoped that increased integration between the sites could provide a win-win where we sent new traffic and new registrations to TPF, and our TPF users could get to re-meet each other on our site.

That said, we certainly understand if Vlad would rather not incorporate such functionality at this time, so we've taken down the site linker until such time that we are told Vlad is cool with it coming back into existence (if ever).

For the record, we never save users' password or sensitive information on our system longer than absolutely necessary. Like our imports from other sites, we have safeguards in place to ensure that all personal information is encrypted while we have it, and purged from our servers as soon as we have verified an established identity.

Our plan is to continue to build the most functionality and widest inventory of bags available online, at prices far lower for sellers than other marketplaces. We have already personally reached out to the big V&M to offer to discuss whether this functionality would be beneficial to our sites' mutual users. And we plan to continue to have a presence on tPf to the extent we're able.

Bill Harding
CEO
Bonanza.com"
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Then, in response to some PurseForum members questions in post 75, he responded with:

"@AuntFlo: As pointed out by some others, tPf is not the first site that we let our users link their accounts to; generally speaking, we think that being able to connect accounts between the different sites you use is a useful idea for our mutual users. And we had hoped the traffic we hope to drive to tPf through the feature would make it a win-win. But again, we're fine taking the feature down, it certainly isn't a major aspect of the overall site, just a nicety we had hoped would make for a better experience.

@MissMollie: The tracking number showing up is an issue we only heard about recently; we will be looking into it today and it will likely be fixed by tomorrow.

@iluv: It's probably fairly clear at this point, but our primary rationale was user convenience. And the fact that we had already built out similar functionality to link with other sites meant that we already had the technology to temporarily store user info in a secure fashion. But we certainly don't want to step on toes for sites that aren't comfortable with such features, which is why we've taken it down.

Bill Harding
CEO
Bonanza"
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It has always been a PurseForum rule that users can not have more than one user ID. Also, about a year ago, ThePurseForum decided not to allow company representatives to utilize their forums as means to interact with their customers. So, they "Sofa King Banned" Bill, Mark and Tom (of Bonanza) from using their site any longer.

While they were at it, they closed the Bonanzle/Bonanza thread where Bonanza staff would interact with their users. Bonanza was using information from the thread to detect conterfeit handbags and other designer items listed on Bonanza and their new handbag site.

Here is the link to that thread:

http://forum.purseblog.com/ebay-forum/bonanzle-fakes-421522.html

Now the question is, what kind of damage to Bonanza and their handbag site was caused by management simply doing what they wanted and not asking for the proper permissions first?

While we do not believe that Bonanza had any mailicious intentions, we applaud ThePurseForum staff for acting swiftly to protect their site and members.