An update to our Privacy policy

Written by The Trade Me Team in General at 1:00pm, Tue 5 Sep 2017

A few weeks ago, we let you know about a change we were making to our Privacy policy. This change comes into effect today.

While Trade Me already places a number of restrictions on the sale of firearms, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes with Police to increase the safety and transparency of our firearms community.

From 13 September, we'll begin to ask for the name and number on a firearms licence before allowing a Trade Me member to bid, ask questions, click ‘Buy Now’ or continue with the purchase of a firearms listing. We will use this information to verify that the buyer or seller has a legitimate and current firearms licence, and that those details match their Trade Me membership.

We will then send a request containing the member’s name and supplied firearms licence number to Police via our application programming interface (or API). Police will provide a ‘Yes/No’ response, so we can establish whether the licence is valid and belongs to that member. Trade Me will not have access to or receive any personal information from the Firearms Licence records at any time.

Note that existing restrictions still apply, and sellers must sight the firearms licence of the buyer, or receive written confirmation signed by Police confirming the buyer holds a valid firearms licence.

If you have any questions about this change, please get in touch.

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