Privacy FAQ
For more information, check out our full Privacy policy.
We disclose information to third parties that help us provide services to you (e.g. a service provider who helps us send you emails), as well as advertisers and certain businesses where you allow it. In addition, we can disclose your information for things like law enforcement, fraud prevention, and for legal processes. You can read more in our annual transparency report and our privacy policy.
We may also let developers use our API, which means things like your public listing content or photos can appear elsewhere. This may include your personal information. However, developers are subject to our API Terms, and they need to get your permission before they can access any non-public information about you.
We may also share your information across our services if you have an active Trade Me account. This includes businesses we fully or partly own ('Trade Me affiliated services') or in tailored products.
You can find a list of Trade Me affiliated services and tailored products, and the personal information that could be disclosed, at the Privacy options, advertising and remarketing on Trade Me page. You can also read more below on Trade Me affiliated services and tailored products, including how you can opt out of certain types of disclosure.
This is a service provided by a business Trade Me fully or partly owns, but doesn't include services that are part of the Trade Me family such as: Trade Me, Trade Me Insurance, Holiday Houses, FindSomeone, Viewing Tracker, homes.co.nz, MotorWeb (NZ), DealerBase, Tradevine, OneHub, and Paystation.
Some of our services provide tailored personal information to other users of those services. For example, if you have an active Trade Me Job Profile, subject to your profile settings, we may share your Trade Me Job Profile (i.e. tailored information about you) with recruiters and job advertisers that use our candidates database service (which we call Trade Me Jobs Profiles). We call these types of services 'tailored products'.
You can see our tailored products, and the personal information that could be disclosed, at the Privacy options, advertising and remarketing on Trade Me page.
When developing a tailored product, we look to our privacy principles to ensure that personal information is processed fairly. People who receive personal information from a tailored product will also be contractually restricted in their use of your information. This means they can only use the information in a specific way.
We'll limit how we use and disclose certain kinds of sensitive information. This includes:
- payments-related information if you use Paystation,
- dating information (like information from dating profile) if you use FindSomeone,
- insurance-related information (like what you put in an life or health insurance form) if you use Trade Me Insurance, and
- certain operational information (like financial, customer, and shipping information) if you use Tradevine.
See clause 8 of our privacy policy for more information.
If you don't have a Trade Me membership (e.g., if you only use Holiday Houses, FindSomeone or homes.co.nz), your personal information will automatically be excluded from sharing with Trade Me affiliated services or for tailored products.
However, without an active Trade Me membership, you won't be able to access the 'privacy options' page where you can choose to opt out of certain types of disclosure. If you would like to access the 'privacy options' page, you can create a Trade Me membership, or reactivate your old one by contacting us.
We make sure the data we hold about you is protected by robust, best practice security systems. Unlike many online businesses, we also have a dedicated Trust and Safety team who work across our services to help keep our sites safer and protect against people who might misuse your information.
We understand Kiwi trust us to keep their information safe. We're careful about how we use your information and make sure we have good systems to protect your information.
We've committed to the following privacy principles, which guide what we do in relation to your personal information:
- We'll respect your privacy – our brand is built on trust and integrity.
- We're committed to being transparent and honest, so you know what we do with your personal information (including when something goes wrong).
- We use personal information to add value to your life.
- We avoid getting involved in anything creepy that could breach your trust.
We're one of the few New Zealand businesses publishing an annual transparency report explaining how we disclose information for things like law enforcement.
If you have an active Trade Me membership, you will have the option to opt-in or opt-out of certain ways your information can be used or disclosed by Trade Me.
When opted in, Trade Me can use and disclose your personal information:
- to show you, and allow others to show you, relevant third-party advertising both on Trade Me and off-site
- to advertise Trade Me services to you off-site
- with trusted third parties using Trade Me tailored products, subject to any customised settings you may have selected
- to providers of Trade Me affiliated services.
When opted out, we won't use and disclose your information in the above ways. However, advertising will be less relevant and some functionality of tailored products and Trade Me affiliated services will be reduced.
If you don't have an active Trade Me account (i.e., you haven't logged into Trade Me in at least 18 months or don't have an account), you won't be able to access the 'privacy option'. You can create a Trade Me membership, or reactivate your old one by contacting us, to access the privacy option.