eBay User Agreement and Privacy Policy (including Cookies Policy)

The below eBay User Agreement, Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy will be in effect from 12 December 2012.

You should take the time to review each of these policies before they come into effect. Further information can be found by visiting the Frequently Asked Questions.

View the current eBay User Agreement, Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy (in place until 12 December 2012). 

New Policies (effective from 12 December 2012)

• User Agreement
• Privacy Policy
• Cookies Policy
• Frequently Asked Questions

Your User Agreement

In this User Agreement:

“eBay” means eBay International AG.

“eBay services” means the eBay.com.au website and any related eBay service or tool.

1. Introduction
   Welcome to eBay. By using the eBay services, you agree to the following terms with eBay. If you have any questions, please refer to our help section.
   
   This Agreement is effective on 12 December, 2012 for current users, and upon acceptance for new users.
2. Scope
   Before using the eBay services, you must read and accept all of the terms in, and linked to, this User Agreement (“Agreement”) and the eBay Privacy Policy. We strongly recommend that, as you read this User Agreement, you also access and read the hyperlinked information. By accepting this User Agreement, you agree that this User Agreement and Privacy Policy will apply whenever you use the eBay services, or when you use the tools we make available to interact with the eBay services. If you use an eBay site other than eBay.com.au, you acknowledge that you will need to accept and be bound by the terms of that site. Some eBay services may have additional or other terms that we provide to you when you use those services.
3. Using eBay
   While using the eBay services, you will not:
   • post content or items in inappropriate categories or areas on our sites and services;
   • infringe any laws, third party rights or our policies, such as the Prohibited and Restricted Items policies;
   • use the eBay services if you are not able to form legally binding contracts, are under the age of 18, or are suspended from using the eBay services;
   • fail to deliver payment for items purchased by you, unless the seller has materially changed the item's description after you bid, a clear typographical error is made, or you cannot authenticate the seller's identity;
   • fail to deliver items purchased from you, unless the buyer fails to meet the posted terms, or you cannot authenticate the buyer's identity;
   • manipulate the price of any item or interfere with other users' listings;
   • circumvent or manipulate our fee structure, the billing process, or fees owed to eBay;
   • post false, inaccurate, misleading, defamatory or offensive content (including personal information);
   • take any action that may undermine the feedback or ratings systems (such as displaying, importing or exporting feedback information or using it for purposes unrelated to eBay);
   • transfer your eBay account (including feedback) and User ID to another party without our consent;
   • distribute or post spam, unsolicited, or bulk electronic communications, chain letters, or pyramid schemes;
   • distribute viruses or any other technologies that may harm eBay, or the interests or property of eBay users;
   • export or re-export any eBay tools except in compliance with the export control laws of any relevant jurisdictions;
   • copy, modify or distribute rights or content from the eBay services or eBay's copyrights and trademarks; or
   • harvest or otherwise collect information about users, including email addresses, without their consent.
4. Abusing eBay
   eBay and its community of users (“the Community”) work together to keep our sites and services working properly and the Community safe. Please report problems, offensive content, and policy violations to us.
   
   eBay's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program works to ensure that listed items do not infringe upon the copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights of third parties. If you believe that your intellectual property rights have been violated, please notify our VeRO team and we will investigate.
   
   Without limiting other remedies, we may limit, suspend or terminate our service and user accounts, prohibit access to the eBay services, delay or remove hosted content, and take technical and legal steps to keep users off the sites if we think that they are creating problems or possible legal liabilities, infringing the intellectual property rights of third parties, or acting inconsistently with the letter or spirit of our policies (for example, and without limitation, policies related to shill bidding, conducting off-eBay transactions, feedback manipulation, circumventing temporary or permanent suspensions or users who we believe are harassing our employees or other users). Additionally, we may, in appropriate circumstances and at our reasonable discretion, suspend or terminate accounts of users who may be repeat infringers of intellectual property rights of third parties. We also reserve the right to cancel unconfirmed accounts or accounts that have been inactive for a long time, or to modify or discontinue eBay services.
5. Fees and Services
   Joining eBay and bidding on listed items is free. We do charge fees for using other services, such as listing items. When you list an item or use a service that has a fee, you have an opportunity to review and accept the fees that you will be charged based on our Fees schedule, which we may change from time to time. Changes to that schedule are effective after we provide you with at least fourteen days' notice by posting the changes on the eBay site. We may choose to temporarily change the fees for our services for promotional events (for example, free listing days) or new services, and such changes are effective when we post the temporary promotional event or new service on the sites.
   
   Unless otherwise stated, all fees are quoted in Australian Dollars. You are responsible for paying all fees and applicable taxes associated with our sites and services in a timely manner with a valid payment method. If your payment method fails or your account is past due, we may collect fees owed using other collection mechanisms. (This includes charging other payment methods on file with us, retaining collection agencies and legal counsel and, for accounts over 180 days past due, deducting the amount owed from your PayPal account balance.)
6. Content
   When you give us content, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise any and all copyright, trademark, publicity, and database rights (but no other rights) you have in the content, in any media known now or in the future.
   
   For the convenience of sellers, we may offer catalogues of stock images, descriptions and product specifications that are provided by third parties (including eBay users). You may use catalogue content solely in connection with your eBay listings during the time your listings are on eBay's sites.
   
   While we try to offer reliable data, we cannot promise that the catalogues will always be accurate and up-to-date, and you agree not to hold our catalogue content providers or us responsible for inaccuracies in catalogues. If you choose to include catalogue content in your listings, you continue to be fully responsible for your listings and for ensuring that your listings are accurate, do not include misleading information, and comply with this User Agreement and all eBay policies. The catalogues may include copyrighted, trademarked or other proprietary materials. You agree not to remove any copyright, proprietary or identification markings included with the catalogues or create any derivative works based on catalogue content (other than by including them in your listings).
7. Trading on eBay and Limitation of Liability
   While we strive to maintain a safe trading environment you accept that there are unfortunately sometimes risks when trading online and using our sites, including dealing with underage or fraudulent persons. You will not hold eBay responsible for other users' content, actions or inactions, items they list or their destruction of allegedly fake items. You acknowledge that we are not an auctioneer. Instead, our sites are venues to allow anyone to offer, sell, and buy just about anything, at anytime, from anywhere, in a variety of pricing formats and locations, such as stores, fixed price formats and auction-style formats. We are not involved in the actual transaction between buyers and sellers. We have no control over and do not guarantee the quality, safety or legality of items advertised, the truth or accuracy of users’ content or listings, the ability of sellers to sell items, the ability of buyers to pay for items, or that a buyer or seller will actually complete a transaction or return an item. You should consider and use all of our suggested safe trading guidelines when trading online, including our Safe Trading Overview. 
   
   When you enter into a transaction you create a legally binding contract with another user, unless the item is listed in a category under the ‘Non-Binding Bid’ Policy. You must ensure that you comply with your obligations to that other member and are aware of any laws relevant to you as a buyer or seller. If another member breaches any obligation to you, you – not eBay – are responsible for enforcing any rights that you may have.  
   
   You alone, and not eBay, are responsible for ensuring that your listing, bidding and selling and any other activities conducted on our site are lawful. You must ensure that you comply with all applicable laws in Australia and other countries. You must also ensure that you strictly comply with this Agreement and the policies which form part of the Agreement.
   
   We do not take ownership of the items at any time and do not transfer legal ownership of items from the seller to the buyer. Further, we cannot guarantee continuous or secure access to the eBay services, and their operation may be interfered with by numerous factors outside of our control. Accordingly, to the extent legally permitted, we exclude all implied warranties, terms and conditions. We are not liable for any loss of money, goodwill or reputation, or any special, indirect or consequential damages arising, directly or indirectly, out of your use of or your inability to use the eBay services.
   
   To the extent that eBay is able to limit the remedies available under this Agreement, eBay expressly limits its liability for breach of a non-excludable statutory guarantee to the following remedies:
   • the supply of the services again; or
   • the payment of the cost of having the services supplied again.
8. Release
   If you have a dispute with one or more users, you release us (and our officers, directors, agents, subsidiaries, joint venturers and employees) from claims, demands and damages (actual and consequential) of every kind and nature, known and unknown, arising out of or in any way connected with such disputes.
9. Breach
   Without limiting other remedies available to eBay at law, in equity or under this Agreement, we may, without notice to you and in our sole discretion (which shall be exercised reasonably, having regard to the circumstances), delay listing your item, issue you a warning, restrict your activities through our site (including but not limited to buying, selling and posting activities), temporarily suspend, indefinitely suspend or terminate your membership and refuse to provide our services to you if:
   
   • you have, or we believe that you have, breached this Agreement, which includes any of our Policies in any way (including those Policies referred to in Clause 18 below);
   • we are unable to verify or authenticate any information you provide to us;
   • we believe that your actions may cause loss or damage to or otherwise unlawfully harm you, our users, third parties or us, our related bodies corporate or affiliates, our directors, employees or agents; or
   • if we reasonably believe that any of your information  (which includes an item listed on the site) is inappropriate or of an offensive nature.
   For security, confidentiality and privacy reasons, we are not obligated to provide you or other members the details of any investigation that we conduct or any action which we take, in relation to your membership or your account other than those that are already provided to you by us.
10. Access and Interference
    The sites contain robot exclusion headers. Much of the information on the sites is updated on a real-time basis and is proprietary or is licensed to eBay by our users or third parties. You agree that you will not use any robot, spider, scraper or other automated means to access the eBay services for any purpose without our express written permission.
    
    Additionally, you agree that you will not:
    • take any action that imposes or may impose (in our sole discretion, exercised reasonably) an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure;
    • copy, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, or publicly display any content (except for your information) from the sites without the prior express written permission of eBay and the appropriate third party, as applicable;
    • interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of the sites, services or tools, or any activities conducted on or with the sites, services or tools; or
    • bypass our robot exclusion headers or other measures we may use to prevent or restrict access to the sites.
11. Listing Conditions
    By listing an item on eBay’s sites, you agree to pay eBay’s fees for the listing, assume full responsibility for the content of the listing and item offered, and accept the following listing conditions: When you list an item on eBay’s sites, your listing will be posted on eBay’s sites and can be viewed in My eBay. Your listing may not be immediately searchable by keyword or category for several hours (or up to 24 hours in some circumstances), so eBay can’t guarantee exact listing durations. Where your listing appears in search and browse results it may be based on certain factors including listing format, title, bidding activity, end time, keywords, price and shipping cost, feedback, and detailed seller ratings. You can read more about where your listings appear in search and browse results in eBay’s Help Pages.
12. Cross Border Trade
    You may be able to sell your items internationally by listing items for sale directly on one or more of eBay's international sites or where you choose to list items with an international shipping option. You agree that we may display your listing on an eBay site other than the eBay site where you listed your item for sale, including those situations where you choose to list items with an international shipping option (such as worldwide shipping). However, you may restrict international buyers from purchasing your items if you explicitly exclude international shipping locations from your listings by creating and applying an exclusion list to your listings. If your item is sold to a buyer on an eBay site other than your eBay site of registration, you agree to be subject to that other site's policies and the terms and conditions in eBay's International Selling Agreement. You are responsible for complying with all laws and regulations applicable to the sale and shipment of items to international buyers.
13. Closing Your Account
    You may close your eBay account at any time, subject to:
    • not having any outstanding items listed on the website; and
    • resolving any outstanding matters (such as a suspension or restriction on your account); and
    • paying any outstanding fees owing on the account.
14. Privacy
    We do not provide your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit consent. We use your information only as described in the eBay Privacy Policy. We view protection of users' privacy as a very important community principle. We store and process your information on computers located in the United States that are protected by physical as well as technological security devices. You can access and modify the information you provide us and choose not to receive certain communications by signing-in to your account. We use third parties to verify and certify our privacy principles. For a complete description of how we use and protect your personal information, see the eBay Privacy Policy. If you object to your information being transferred or used in this way please do not use our services.
15. Indemnity
    You will indemnify us (and our officers, directors, agents, subsidiaries, joint venturers and employees) against any claim or demand, including legal fees and costs, made against us by any third party due to or arising out of your breach of this Agreement, or your infringement of any law or the rights of a third party in the course of using the eBay services.
16. No Agency
    eBay is not your agent for any purpose in relation to this Agreement or your use of the eBay services.
17. Notices
    Legal notices must be served on eBay's registered agent (in the case of eBay) or to the email address you provide to eBay during the registration process (in your case). Notice will be deemed given 24 hours after email is sent, unless the sending party is notified that the email address is invalid or that the email has not been delivered. Alternatively, we may give you legal notice by mail to the address provided by you during the registration process. In such case, notice will be deemed given three days after the date of mailing.
    
    Any notices to eBay’s registered agent must be given by registered ordinary post (or if posted to or from a place outside Australia, by registered airmail) or by facsimile transmission to eBay International A.G., c/- Gadens Lawyers, 77 Castlereagh St, Sydney NSW 2000, Fax: (02) 9931 4888.
18. Legal Disputes
    If a dispute arises between you and eBay, our goal is to provide you with a neutral and cost effective means of resolving the dispute quickly. We strongly encourage you to first contact us directly to seek a resolution by going to the About Contacting Customer Support help page. We will consider reasonable requests to resolve the dispute through alternative dispute resolution procedures, such as mediation or arbitration, as alternatives to litigation.
    • Law and Forum for Legal Disputes – This Agreement will be governed in all respects by the laws of New South Wales. We encourage you to try and resolve disputes using certified mediation (such as online dispute resolution processes). If a dispute cannot be resolved then you and eBay irrevocably submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales, Australia.
19. Additional Terms
    It is important to read and understand all our policies as they provide the rules for trading on the eBay site.  You should read the eBay Rules and Policies Overview to see the rules that apply to you.  In addition there may be specific policies or rules that apply, and it is your responsibility to check our Help pages and policies to make sure you comply.
    
    Our  policies, including all policies referenced in them, are part of this Agreement and provide additional terms and conditions related to specific services offered on our sites, including but not limited to:
    
    • Privacy Policy
    • Outage Policy
    • Prohibited and Restricted Items Policy
    • eBay Boards Usage Policy
    • Listing Policy
    • Rules about Intellectual Property
    Each of these policies may be changed from time to time. Changes take effect when we post them on the eBay.com.au site. When using particular services on our sites, you are subject to any posted policies or rules applicable to services you use through the sites, which may be posted from time to time. All such policies or rules are incorporated into this User Agreement.
20. General
    eBay International AG is located at Helvetiastrasse 15/17, 3005, Bern, Switzerland. 
    
    If any provision of this Agreement is held to be invalid or unenforceable, such provision will be severed and the remaining provisions will remain in effect. In our sole discretion, we may assign our rights and obligations under this Agreement to another entity. Headings are for reference purposes only and do not form part of this Agreement. Our failure to act on a breach by you or others doesn't waive our right to act on subsequent or similar breaches.
    
    We may amend this Agreement at any time by posting the amended terms on eBay.com.au and by notifying you through the eBay Message Centre (in My eBay) or directly to the email address linked to your account. Except as stated elsewhere, all amended terms will automatically be effective 30 days after they are initially posted. If you do not accept the changes you should close your account in accordance with Clause 13 of this Agreement.
    
    This Agreement contains the entire understanding and agreement between you and eBay. The following Sections survive any termination of this Agreement: Fees and Services (with respect to fees owed for our services), Release, Content, Liability, Indemnity and Legal Disputes.

Privacy Policy

Last Update: 12 December, 2012

Contents

• Scope and Consent
• Global Privacy Standards
• Collection
• Information Sharing and Registration with Social Media Websites
• Marketing
• Opting Out of Personal Information Use
• Use
• Our Disclosure of Your Information
• Information You Share on eBay
• Using Information from eBay
• Cookies
• No Spam, Spyware or Spoofing
• Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information
• Protecting and Storing Your Personal Information
• Closing Your Account; Retention of Personal Information
• Third Parties
• General

Scope and Consent

This Privacy Policy describes how eBay International AG, with registered office at Helvetiastrasse 15-17, 3005 Bern Switzerland, collects, uses, stores, shares and protects your personal information. It applies to the eBay.com.au website and all related websites, applications, services and tools where this policy is referenced, regardless of how you access or use them. You can view a summary of this Privacy Policy at our Privacy Summary Page.

Throughout this Privacy Policy, we use the term “personal information” to describe information that can be associated with a specific person and can be used to identify that person. We do not consider personal information to include information that has been made anonymous or aggregated so that it cannot be used, whether in combination with other information or otherwise, to identify a specific user.

By using eBay.com.au and its related websites, applications, services and tools and/or registering for an eBay account, you expressly consent to our collection, use, disclosure and retention of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy and in our User Agreement. We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amended terms on this site. All amended terms automatically take effect 30 days after they are initially posted on the site. Additionally, we will notify you through the eBay Message Centre and/or via email of any material changes to this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy is effective on 12 December 2012, for current users, and upon acceptance for new users.

Global Privacy Standards

Our parent company, eBay Inc. has established a set of corporate rules for privacy, known as Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs), which are the global privacy standards for all eBay Inc. companies. These BCRs have been approved by a number of European Union privacy regulators. They are a commitment by eBay Inc. to protect your personal information and honor our privacy obligations regardless of where your personal information is collected, processed or stored. Depending on where you reside, the BCRs may also provide you some additional privacy rights through your local privacy regulator or court. Some eBay-branded websites or websites may be governed by separate privacy policies. The privacy policy that applies will be the policy that is referenced by the respective website, application, service or tool. The privacy practices of our corporate family are consistent with those described in this Privacy Policy and our BCRs. More information about our BCRs and our global privacy practices and principles, including information on how to contact us with any questions, is available at our eBay Privacy Centre.

Collection

You can browse our websites without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. If you register for an account with us, you give us your personal information, and you are not anonymous to us. If you choose to provide us with personal information, you consent to the transfer and storage of that information on our servers located in the United States and elsewhere in the world where our facilities are located.

When you visit our websites or use our applications, services, or tools, we collect information sent to us by your computer, mobile phone or other access device. The information sent to us includes data on the pages you access, your computer IP address, device identifiers, the type of operating system you’re using, your location, mobile network information, standard web log data, and other information. Web log data includes the browser type you’re using and traffic to and from our site. This information is not associated with you personally unless you are a registered user.

We collect the following types of personal information in order to provide you with the use and access to our websites, applications, services and tools, and for the additional purposes set out in this Privacy Policy:

• email address, phone number, mobile telephone number, physical contact information, and (depending on the service used) sometimes financial information, such as credit card or bank account numbers;
• transactional information based on your activities on the sites (such as bidding, buying, selling, item and content you generate or that relates to your account), shipping, billing and other information you provide to purchase or ship an item;
• personal information you provide to us through community discussions, member information pages, correspondence, chats, dispute resolution, or shared by you from other social applications, services or websites;
• additional personal information we ask you to submit to authenticate yourself or if we believe you are violating site policies (for example, we may ask you to send us an ID or bill to verify your address, or to answer additional questions online to help verify your identity or ownership of an item you list);
• other supplemental information obtained from third parties such as demographic and navigation data; and credit check information, and additional information about you from a credit bureau, as permitted by law;
• information from your interaction with our sites, services, content and advertising, including, but not limited to, device ID, device type, geo-location information, computer and connection information, statistics on page views, traffic to and from the sites, ad data, IP address and standard web log information.

Information Sharing and Registration with Social Media Websites

We offer sign-on services that allow you to use third party login credentials to access the eBay websites. We also offer services that allow you to share information with third party social media websites such as Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, and others.

You may choose to provide us with access to certain personal information stored by such third party websites. The personal information we have access to varies by website and is controlled by your privacy settings on that website and your consent.  By associating an account managed by a third party with your eBay account and authorising eBay to have access to this information, you agree that eBay may collect, use and store information from these websites in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Our primary purpose in collecting personal information is to provide you with access to our websites, applications, services and tools, and provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customised experience. You agree that we may use your personal information to:

• provide services and customer support you request, including service updates;
• resolve disputes, collect fees, and troubleshoot problems;
• prevent, detect, and investigate potentially prohibited or illegal activities, and enforce our User Agreement;
• customise, measure and improve our services and the content, layout, and operation of our websites and applications;
• compare information for accuracy, and verify it with third parties;
• aggregate and/or make anonymous your personal information, so that it cannot be used, whether in combination with other information or otherwise, to identify you;
• contact you at telephone numbers we have collected, by placing a voice call or through text (SMS) or email messaging, as authorised by our User Agreement;
• provide you with other services requested by you in the manner described when we collect the information; and
• combine your personal information with information we collect from other companies and use it for the purposes described above and within this Privacy Policy.

Marketing

You agree that we may use your personal information to tell you about our and our corporate family’s websites, applications, services and tools, deliver targeted marketing and promotional offers based on your communication preferences, and customise measure and improve our advertising, based on your ad customisation preferences.

We do not sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your consent. We may combine your personal information with information we collect from other companies and use it to improve and personalise our advertising and marketing to you.

Opting Out of Personal Information Use

If you do not wish to receive marketing and promotional communications from us, you can indicate your communications preference in your My eBay page, or within the direct communication from us. If you do not wish to participate in our ad-customisation programs, you can opt-out by following the directions provided within the applicable advertisement, or directly at our Ad Choice program.

If you withdraw your consent for the use or disclosure of your personal information for the other purposes set out in this Privacy Policy we may not be able to continue to allow you to have access to our websites, applications, or tools, or to provide you with some or all of the services and customer support offered to our users and authorised under this Privacy Policy and our User Agreement.

Our Disclosure of Your Information

We disclose personal information to respond to legal requirements, enforce our policies, respond to claims that a listing or other content violates the rights of others, or protect anyone's rights, property, or safety. Such information will be disclosed in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. As stated above, we do not disclosure your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit consent.

We also share your personal information with:

• Members of the eBay Inc. corporate family to provide joint content and services (like registration, transactions and customer support), to help detect and prevent potentially illegal acts and violations of our policies, and to guide decisions about their products, sites, applications, tools, services and communications. Members of our corporate family will use this information to send you marketing communications only if you have requested their services and will use your personal information in compliance with their respective privacy policies and our global privacy standards
• Service providers under contract who help with our business operations (such as, but not limited to, fraud investigations, bill collection, affiliate and rewards programs, website operations, and co-branded credit cards)
• Other third parties to whom you explicitly ask us to send your information (or about whom you are otherwise explicitly notified and consent to when using a specific service)
• Law enforcement or regulatory agencies, or authorised third-parties, in response to a verified request relating to a criminal investigation or alleged illegal activity or any other activity that may expose us, you, or any other eBay user to legal liability. In such events, we will disclose information relevant and necessary to the investigation or inquiry, such as name, city, state, postcode, telephone number, email address, User ID history, IP address, fraud complaints, bidding and listing history, and anything else we may deem relevant to the investigation
• Credit bureaus. We may report information about your account to credit bureaus. Late payments, missed payments, or other defaults on your account may be reflected in your credit report
• eBay VeRO Program participants under confidentiality agreement, as we in our sole discretion believe necessary or appropriate in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, piracy, or other unlawful activity. In such events, we will disclose name, street address, city, state, postcode, country, phone number, email address and company name
• Other business entities, should we plan to merge with or be acquired by that business entity. Should such a combination occur, we will require that the new combined entity follow this Privacy Policy with respect to your personal information. If your personal information will be used or disclosed for any purposes not set out in this policy, you will receive prior notice.

While we use contractual and other measures to ensure protection of personal information, the laws and regulations relating to privacy and personal information protection in other jurisdictions may not be the same as, or similar to, your local privacy laws. The governments, courts, law enforcement or regulatory agencies in these other jurisdictions may be able to request disclosure of personal information through the laws of these countries. In an effort to respect your privacy, we will not otherwise disclose your personal information to law enforcement, other government officials, or other third parties without a subpoena, court order or substantially similar legal procedure, except when we believe in good faith that the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm, financial loss, to report suspected illegal activity, or otherwise keep the community free from bad actors.

Information You Share on eBay

Your User ID is displayed throughout eBay (and so available to the public), and is connected to all of your eBay activity. Other people can see your bids, purchases, items for sale, storefronts, Feedback, ratings and associated comments. Notices sent to other community members about suspicious activity and policy violations on our sites refer to User IDs and specific items. So if you associate your name with your User ID, the people to whom you have revealed your name will be able to personally identify your eBay activities.

If you access our websites from a shared computer or a computer in an internet café, certain information about you, such as your User ID, activity or reminders from eBay, may also be visible to other individuals who use the computer after you.

Using Information from eBay

eBay enables you to share personal and financial information to complete transactions and collect payments. We encourage you to disclose your privacy practices and respect the privacy of other users. We cannot guarantee the privacy or security of your information and therefore we encourage you to evaluate the privacy and security policies of your trading partner before entering into a transaction and choosing to share your information. To help protect your privacy, we allow only limited access to other users' contact, shipping and financial information to facilitate your transactions and collect payments. When users are involved in a transaction, they may have access to each other's name, User ID, email address and other contact and shipping information. In all cases, you must give other users a chance to remove themselves from your database and a chance to review what information you have collected about them.

You agree to use user information only for:

• eBay transaction-related purposes that are not unsolicited commercial messages;
• using services offered through eBay (such as escrow, shipping, and fraud complaints), or
• other purposes that a user expressly chooses.

Cookies

When you access our websites or use our services, we (including companies we work with) may place small data files on your computer or other device. These data files may be cookies, pixel tags, "Flash cookies," or other local storage provided by your browser or associated applications ("Cookies"). We use these technologies to: recognise you as a customer; customise services, content, and advertising; measure promotional effectiveness; help ensure that your account security is not compromised; mitigate risk and prevent fraud; and to promote trust and safety across our sites and services.  For more information about why we use cookies, see Cookies, Web Beacons, and Your Privacy.

A few important things you should know about our use of these technologies:

• We offer certain features that are available only through the use of Cookies
• We use Cookies to help identify you and maintain your signed-in status
• Most Cookies are "session cookies," meaning that they are automatically deleted from your hard drive at the end of a session
• You are always free to decline our Cookies if your browser permits, although doing so may interfere with your use of some of our sites or services
• You may encounter Cookies from third parties, known as service providers, that we have allowed on our websites that assist us with various aspects of our website operations and services
• You also may encounter Cookies from third parties on certain pages of the websites that we do not control and have not authorised. (For example, if you view a web page created by another user, there may be a Cookie placed by that web page).

No Spam, Spyware or Spoofing

We and our users do not tolerate spam. Make sure to set your eBay communication preferences so we communicate to you as you prefer. You are not licensed to add other eBay users, even a user who has purchased an item from you, to your mailing list (email or physical mail) without their express consent. To report eBay-related spam or spoof emails to eBay, please forward the email to spam@ebay.com or spoof@ebay.com. You may not use our communication tools to send spam or otherwise send content that would violate our User Agreement. We automatically scan and may manually filter messages to check for spam, viruses, phishing attacks and other malicious activity or illegal or prohibited content, but we do not permanently store messages sent through these tools. If you send an email to an email address that is not registered in our community (via Refer-a-Friend or other tools), we will not rent or sell that email address.

Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information

Your password is the key to your account. Use unique numbers, letters and special characters, and do not disclose your eBay password to anyone. If you do share your password or your personal information with others, remember that you are responsible for all actions taken in the name of your account. If you lose control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your personal information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your behalf. Therefore, if your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately notify eBay and change your password.

You can see, review and change most of your personal information by signing on to eBay. Generally, we will not manually modify your personal information because it is very difficult to verify your identity remotely. You must promptly update your personal information if it changes or is inaccurate. Once you make a public posting, you may not be able to change or remove it.

Protecting and Storing Your Personal Information

We store and process your personal information on our computers in the United States and elsewhere in the world where our facilities are located. We protect your information using technical and administrative security measures to reduce the risks of loss, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure and alteration. Some of the safeguards we use are firewalls and data encryption, physical access controls to our data centres, and information access authorisation controls.

We take steps to ensure that the personal information we collect is accurate and up to date, and we provide you with the opportunity to update your information through your account profile settings.

Closing Your Account; Retention of Personal Information

Upon your request, and subject to the following sentence, we will close your account, and as soon as reasonably possible remove your personal information so that it cannot be viewed by other users. Removal will be based on your account activity and in accordance with applicable law. We may also close or deactivate inactive accounts, or accounts that are used in violation of our User Agreement.

In general, personal information from closed or inactive accounts will be deleted or rendered anonymous as soon as reasonably possibly after the account is closed or deactivated. Under certain circumstances we may retain personal information from closed or inactive accounts for longer. Grounds for doing so would include; prevention of fraud, collection of fees owed, resolution of disputes, to enforce our eBay User Agreement, or to otherwise take actions permitted by law. Under such circumstances this information will be kept as long as it is necessary and relevant for our operations, and to comply with any applicable law.

Third Parties

Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document addresses only the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. If you disclose your information to others, whether they are bidders, buyers or sellers on our websites or other websites throughout the internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the information you provide to them. eBay does not control the privacy policies of third parties, and you are subject to the privacy policies of those third parties where applicable. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.

Contact Us

If your questions are not answered online, you may write to us at: eBay Inc. Attn: Legal - Global Privacy Practices, 2145 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, California 95125, or using the Contact Us form. More information about the Global Privacy Office or how to contact us is available out our eBay Privacy Centre.