Privacy

What BarterLocal collects, why, and what you can do about it. We follow the Australian Privacy Principles.

What we collect

• Your account: email address, password (stored only as a one-way hash), display name, and when you confirmed you are 18 or older and accepted the Terms.
• Your profile: the photo, bio, area name and contact preference you add.
• Your spot on the map. We keep it private (see below).
• What you post: listings and their photos, chat messages, trades, ratings, reports and blocks.
• Security records: when you sign in and from which IP address, to protect accounts and to limit abuse.

We remove the hidden data, such as GPS location, from every photo before we store it. We do not ask for your phone number, street address or date of birth.

What other members see

Your display name, photo, bio, area name, a map pin 200 to 600 metres from your spot, your listings, your balance and trades, and the ratings and comments other members gave you. Other members never see your email address or your exact spot. Your messages go only to the member you chat with.

How we use it

To run BarterLocal: to show profiles and listings, deliver messages, keep the credit ledger, deal with reports and keep members safe. An admin can see your email address and your records to deal with a report or a problem. When a member reports a chat, an admin reads that chat.

Who else gets it

• We do not sell your information and we have no advertisers.
• Map search: our server sends the words you type to the OpenStreetMap Nominatim service to find the place, and sends your pin (never your exact spot) to it to name the area.
• Map pictures: your browser loads them from OpenStreetMap, which sees your IP address.
• Email: account emails go out through our email provider.
• Visit counts: Google Analytics counts visits to our pages. It sees your IP address, your browser and the kind of page you open, such as a listing or a profile. We do not send it which listing or member, page titles, search words, your messages, your email address or your map spot.
• We give information to police or a regulator only when the law requires it.

Cookies and tracking

We use a cookie to keep you signed in. Your light or dark theme is saved in your browser. Google Analytics sets its own cookies to count visits and to see which pages people use. There is no advertising.

Deleting your account

Settings has Delete account. It removes your email address, password, name, photo, bio, map spot, listings and their photos, and your messages. It also removes the words of your reports, dispute notes and rating comments.

Some records stay, with no name on them: the chats and trades the other member was in (shown as "Deleted member"), the credit ledger (it keeps the community's credits balanced), the stars of ratings you gave, security records, and a one-way code made from your email address, so that a new account with that address does not get a second set of starter credits.

Your rights

You can see and change your profile in the app at any time. You can ask for a copy of your information, ask us to correct it, or complain about how we handle it. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.