Etsy is a platform that’s been actively growing since 2005.
They have 81.9 million buyers, and in 2020, they boasted 1.72 billion in revenue.
The company is not a fly-by-night organization, and it experiences the typical issues that any large company would.
Is it safe?
We will illustrate 10 reasons you can trust Etsy and some actionable tips to keep you safer so you can use Etsy confidently as either a buyer or a seller.
Is Etsy Safe? (10 Reasons It Is)
1. Financial & Personal Information Privacy
As a buyer, the seller is not given your financial information, nor can they gain access to it for any reason.
The seller doesn’t give refunds or do anything with your debit or credit card numbers.
The information you give to Etsy, the company, stays in your buyer profile.
The seller only sees the email that you provide and the shipping address.
Each person has a different level of concern when it comes to feeling secure online.
There are some things you can do to keep your financial information safer with Etsy.
- Never volunteer any information to anyone online, even at Etsy or any other company. Etsy will never ask you for your financial information. If they need you to update it, they’ll prompt you to do that yourself on their site in your buyer’s profile.
- Any seller that prompts you to move the financial aspect off of the platform should be reported immediately to Etsy. Don’t do business with them.
- If you meet an Etsy seller in person, which does happen, don’t speak your credit card information out loud. Sign for it or swipe the card instead, and never write it on a piece of paper and hand it to them. The seller should have a point of sale.
- Don’t use Etsy messenger or any platform including email or the phone to provide full credit or debit card information, tax ID, or any usernames or passwords.
- Know who has access or permission to use your financial information and check your statements regularly. If you notice anything odd, address it with the card issuer or bank immediately.
- Do you share the computer with a family member, roommate, or friend? Do you use a work or public computer? Make sure you change the passwords regularly and log off the site entirely when you walk away or are finished using it. A lot of damage can be done in just a few moments.
- You can go one step farther and create an email strictly for buying and or selling. You can also get a P.O. Box as long as there is a valid address, it’s mail accessible (which it would be), and it’s large enough for packages. The safest sizes for this type of thing are 11X5.5, 11X11, or 25X12. To date, the cost can run anywhere from $10 to $40 per month or more, depending on where you are in the world.
2. Etsy Has Strict Seller Guidelines
Etsy puts forth strict seller guidelines.
There are many, but we’ll summarize them very briefly.
The seller must have a complete profile, and all items must be handmade by the seller.
This means no reselling of the products of others and claiming “Handmade” status.
In fact, you must credit each person involved in the creation of that product.
The seller must use their own photographs of the product and no stock photos.
This makes things more transparent, so the buyer knows exactly what they’re buying.
Vintage items must be verifiable at no less than 20 years old.
Each item is sold at a set price.
If there are customizable items being sold, the seller must state clearly and early in the description that the photographed item is an example.
Party and craft supplies may be commercial under some additional restrictions.
Everything else should be hand-crafted or vintage.
The seller must have real reviews and no duplicate shops to increase their ranking via review numbers.
No copyright infringement on the work of others is permitted.
They aren’t allowed to spam or approach buyers with sales that are not related to the product already bought.
The seller can’t speak negatively about another seller to other buyers or sellers.
3. Etsy Has a Fair And Expedient Return Policy
Etsy is typically fast with chargebacks and returns, with a caveat: you should follow the below steps to make sure that happens.
They won’t tell you how to do this, so forewarned is forearmed.
When you have an issue with a product for any reason, even if you think the seller won’t be decent about it, contact them through Etsy first and politely let them know what the issue is.
Then give them a day or two to respond and resolve it.
From the research, we can see that Etsy will ask you, the buyer, to do this first.
Why?
With all the buyers and sellers they have, it saves them the time of taking those steps themselves and relaying the issues and responses back and forth.
Once you contact the seller and decide you really want to return the product, Etsy will chargeback the seller and, barring anything unusual, will refund the money to the card you have on file.
4. Reasonable Protection From Fake Reviews
Today, we have ghostwriters and people paying for reviews from people they don’t know and never bought the product.
At Etsy, sellers and buyers are encouraged to take a picture of the purchase from the customer, and it will be included.
Anything can happen behind the scenes that Etsy or any company can’t control, so there are some steps you can take to further safeguard yourself against fake accounts or bad sellers and products.
- Purchase from accounts with the correct, real, unedited images of their customers holding, using, or wearing the product.
- There are forums you can go to and get a feel for the comments on both favorite sellers and least favorite. Go in with an open mind and look at what the circumstance was and what’s being said on the negative commentary. Use your intuition.
- Purchase from those with four stars and more.
- Look carefully at the reviews. Do they seem mismatched with the product? Do they have duplicate reviews or reviews that look “spun”, meaning they’re just reworded?
5. Accountability Is High
Etsy reserves the right to shut down your shop either temporarily or permanently and without prior notice.
This seems to happen.
We can’t verify whether or not anyone with a shop that’s been closed was forewarned.
We only know from the complaints we’ve seen in the research.
However, the company reserves the right to do so for any violation of its rules.
The suggestion to make things easier for you as a seller is to always have your own website.
Having your income depend on a platform of any kind means that your eggs are in one basket.
This means you could become an omelet if something goes wrong.
When any platform has issues, you won’t get a formal announcement unless they’re merging or being absorbed in another way.
Even then, they may not have the obligation to tell you what they’re doing.
What do you do with your clients who really belong to a platform?
You lose them.
We suggest you have your own website with a way to collect your client’s information, then send them to Etsy to purchase.
6. Etsy Has A Trust And Safety Team
The way that a company collects your information is important.
According to Etsy’s Trust and Safety Team, Etsy uses what’s called a TLS which most people aren’t familiar with.
It stands for Transport Layer Security.
This means that Etsy encrypts your card information and does not store it.
What does that mean?
It means that, once you enter your credit or debit card information in the system, it will process the transaction to the credit card company to be approved or declined.
It won’t continue to charge the card if it declines.
You will have to update the payment information yourself if it doesn’t go through.
Even when it’s approved, the credit or debit card information is not stored on any database in Etsy, and neither does it go to any third party, including the seller to be saved on any database.
You would have to give that information to the seller, and we’ve already suggested that you don’t do that.
7. The Etsy Site Itself Is SSL Protected
This should be a requirement for all websites, especially e-commerce websites, but they’re not.
Not everyone has one, but most companies that are large enough like Etsy will have one.
We think it’s important, in case the site is ever spoofed or you get an email that’s spoofed, that you understand how to spot it and report it to Etsy quickly.
Look at the browser when you type in the Etsy website.
There’s a padlock at the beginning of the web address to the left of the https or http on a website.
This means the site has an SSL certificate.
One disclaimer: Don’t rely on the SSL padlock alone.
We’d love to tell you it’s that simple, but now, a website can get free low-level SSL certificates.
All they have to do is prove they own the website so the fake might have one, too.
We want you to use Etsy with confidence, so there are further tips.
Your information is secure.
Going to the site is secure.
If you ever get an email from a spoofed Etsy site, this may help you.
This next scenario is a common thing with big companies, even PayPal, which was happening quite often until they stepped up their security game.
Let’s say you receive an email from Etsy—or so you think—and they want you to go to a link they include in the email to take care of some mystery issue that you’re unaware of or to give them your financial information.
First, again, know that Etsy wouldn’t contact you this way.
Second, there may not be a padlock {SSL} in the browser.
Just report it to Etsy.
Here are a few more tips to spot a fake Etsy or any other site, and you can use this knowledge for any similar communication.
- Check that the padlock exists.
- Check the spelling of the site. It could be misspelled in the URL and there could be a very subtle difference that you wouldn’t notice. One of those things can be a period like “Et.sey” or something similar. Look closely at the URL if you happen to decide that it might be legitimate, and type in the URL or click the link. Our suggestion is to forward the email to Etsy and report it.
- Check to see if there is a site seal that says something like “DigiCert”, “Secured”, etc. When you click on it, it should take you to where you can see how that site was certified.
- Wait until you get to a laptop. Click on the padlock, and it should tell you that it’s for Etsy and the certificate is valid. It will also tell you how many cookies are active.
- Put a suspicious-looking site through a quick website checker.
If you get spoofed, when in doubt, don’t fill it out and forward it to Etsy.
8. Etsy Has Arbitration For Disputes
Some may have a concern, both as a buyer and as a seller, that Etsy won’t have the time to deal with customer disputes.
One great thing about Etsy is the arbitration they offer so that neither the customer nor the seller will feel abandoned.
That’s a smart move for their platform because it helps the seller make more sales and the buyer feel more comfortable.
There are three steps to the process should something go wrong.
- We covered this earlier. Contact the seller and try to sort it out. Each seller has their own set of policies. Yes, they have to follow a set guideline put out by Etsy, but they all vary.
- If you can’t sort it out with the seller, then open a case with Etsy. There are eligibility requirements for opening a case that are outlined under that tab on the site.
- Once Etsy quickly reviews your case, they will act as a mediator to sort out the issue to completion.
9. Etsy Has A Help Center
One good sign for any company is that they have a dedicated help center.
This is separate from a support team.
They aren’t charged with anything but to answer your questions.
They know everything about the company and can find answers and solutions to all your issues with the company.
How does this make Etsy safe?
They should be the point of contact for all non-technical issues.
If you have any of the issues mentioned in this article, they can walk you through it to a solution, open cases for you, or refer you to the department you need.
Safety in large companies where money and information is being exchanged must have excellent channels of communication.
10. Etsy Has Support Specialists
The technical support team, IT, and cybersecurity are also key to your safety as a seller and a buyer.
They have a well-rounded tech support team that is there to help the site stay safe and catch any cyber-related issues with your personal information.
If the site is not running well or you discover a bug, then simply create a ticket and detail what you are experiencing.
Etsy has a bounty program with hackerone.com.
This is a professional vulnerability testing site.
There is a list of accepted vulnerabilities that Etsy will award “bounty” for.
If a researcher in that group is the first one to report a legitimate bug or security issue, then a bounty is awarded to them.
This is in the form of their name being displayed on the Etsy site as part of the Etsy security team and an Etsy security team T-shirt.
It helps the team member with future career aspirations in cybersecurity.
Sometimes they are incentivized with cash rewards.
Conclusion
As you have read, this is a pretty comprehensive guide to why Etsy is safe.
The takeaways are simple and actionable.
You can open your Etsy shop as confidently as you would any other company with a heavily fortified security policy that covers all bases.
No company is perfect, and hackers are more sophisticated, but rest assured that most companies that pull in the kind of revenue that Etsy does will strive to stay ahead of the game.
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