Internet portal Yahoo! and on-line auction company eBay have stopped auctions on their sites that offered a detailed mailing list of 200,000 US investors.

A Florida company, Market Logistics Group Inc., was offering the names, addresses, daytime and evening telephone numbers of the investors to the highest bidder.

eBay twice closed down an auction by the company because sales of bulk mailing lists are prohibited by the site’s terms of use. Yahoo! also pulled the auction from its site following an unauthorised press release promoting the sale of the list on Yahoo!

The decisions to halt the auctions exemplify the increasing concern of major US web site operators over violations of privacy and the host site's potential liability for such violations.

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