I recently got my brother in the US to bid on something for me on Ebay.

He won (yay) and when I went to look at the bid history, all the bidder usernames were redacted apart from first and last characters, and the message

"To keep eBay a safe place for buyers and sellers, member-specific information is not displayed in the bid history."

I do not know precisely what kind of safety they refer to in this context but I was left wondering: if they deem it necessary on Ebay, why isn't it necessary on Trade Me?