Privacy Policies

GOOGLE PRIVACY POLICY

When you use our services, you’re trusting us with your information. We understand this is a big responsibility and work hard to protect your information and put you in control.

This Privacy Policy is meant to help you understand what information we collect, why we collect it, and how you can update, manage, export, and delete your information.

Privacy Checkup

Looking to change your privacy settings?

Take the Privacy Checkup

We build a range of services that help millions of people daily to explore and interact with the world in new ways. Our services include:

  • Google apps, sites, and devices, like Search, YouTube, and Google Home
  • Platforms like the Chrome browser and Android operating system
  • Products that are integrated into third-party apps and sites, like ads, analytics, and embedded Google Maps

You can use our services in a variety of ways to manage your privacy. For example, you can sign up for a Google Account if you want to create and manage content like emails and photos, or see more relevant search results. And you can use many Google services when you’re signed out or without creating an account at all, like searching on Google or watching YouTube videos. You can also choose to browse the web in a private mode, like Chrome Incognito mode. And across our services, you can adjust your privacy settings to control what we collect and how your information is used.

To help explain things as clearly as possible, we’ve added examples, explanatory videos, and definitions for key terms. And if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, you can contact us.

INFORMATION GOOGLE COLLECTS

We want you to understand the types of information we collect as you use our services

We collect information to provide better services to all our users — from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful, the people who matter most to you online, or which YouTube videos you might like. The information Google collects, and how that information is used, depends on how you use our services and how you manage your privacy controls.

When you’re not signed in to a Google Account, we store the information we collect with unique identifiers tied to the browser, application, or device you’re using. This allows us to do things like maintain your preferences across browsing sessions, such as your preferred language or whether to show you more relevant search results or ads based on your activity.

When you’re signed in, we also collect information that we store with your Google Account, which we treat as personal information.

Things you create or provide to us

When you create a Google Account, you provide us with personal information that includes your name and a password. You can also choose to add a phone number or payment information to your account. Even if you aren’t signed in to a Google Account, you might choose to provide us with information — like an email address to communicate with Google or receive updates about our services.

We also collect the content you create, upload, or receive from others when using our services. This includes things like email you write and receive, photos and videos you save, docs and spreadsheets you create, and comments you make on YouTube videos.

Information we collect as you use our services

Your apps, browsers & devices

We collect information about the apps, browsers, and devices you use to access Google services, which helps us provide features like automatic product updates and dimming your screen if your battery runs low.

The information we collect includes unique identifiers, browser type and settings, device type and settings, operating system, mobile network information including carrier name and phone number, and application version number. We also collect information about the interaction of your apps, browsers, and devices with our services, including IP address, crash reports, system activity, and the date, time, and referrer URL of your request.

We collect this information when a Google service on your device contacts our servers — for example, when you install an app from the Play Store or when a service checks for automatic updates. If you’re using an Android device with Google apps, your device periodically contacts Google servers to provide information about your device and connection to our services. This information includes things like your device type and carrier name, crash reports, which apps you’ve installed, and, depending on your device settings, other information about how you’re using your Android device.

Your activity

We collect information about your activity in our services, which we use to do things like recommend a YouTube video you might like. The activity information we collect may include:

If you use our services to make and receive calls or send and receive messages, we may collect call and message log information like your phone number, calling-party number, receiving-party number, forwarding numbers, sender and recipient email address, time and date of calls and messages, duration of calls, routing information, and types and volumes of calls and messages.

You can visit your Google Account to find and manage activity information that’s saved in your account.

Go to Google Account

Your location information

We collect information about your location when you use our services, which helps us offer features like driving directions, search results for things near you, and ads based on your general location.

Your location can be determined with varying degrees of accuracy by:

The types of location data we collect and how long we store it depend in part on your device and account settings. For example, you can turn your Android device’s location on or off using the device’s settings app. You can also turn on Location History if you want to create a private map of where you go with your signed-in devices. And if your Web & App Activity setting is enabled, your searches and other activity from Google services, which may also include location information, is saved to your Google Account. Learn more about how we use location information.

In some circumstances, Google also collects information about you from publicly accessible sources. For example, if your name appears in your local newspaper, Google’s Search engine may index that article and display it to other people if they search for your name. We may also collect information about you from trusted partners, such as directory services who provide us with business information to be displayed on Google’s services, marketing partners who provide us with information about potential customers of our business services, and security partners who provide us with information to protect against abuse. We also receive information from advertising partners to provide advertising and research services on their behalf.

We use various technologies to collect and store information, including cookies, pixel tags, local storage, such as browser web storage or application data caches, databases, and server logs.

WHY GOOGLE COLLECTS DATA

We use data to build better services

We use the information we collect from all our services for the following purposes:

Provide our services

We use your information to deliver our services, like processing the terms you search for in order to return results or helping you share content by suggesting recipients from your contacts.

Maintain & improve our services

We also use your information to ensure our services are working as intended, such as tracking outages or troubleshooting issues that you report to us. And we use your information to make improvements to our services — for example, understanding which search terms are most frequently misspelled helps us improve spell-check features used across our services.

Develop new services

We use the information we collect in existing services to help us develop new ones. For example, understanding how people organized their photos in Picasa, Google’s first photos app, helped us design and launch Google Photos.

Provide personalized services, including content and ads

We use the information we collect to customize our services for you, including providing recommendations, personalized content, and customized search results. For example, Security Checkup provides security tips adapted to how you use Google products. And Google Play uses information like apps you’ve already installed and videos you’ve watched on YouTube to suggest new apps you might like.

Depending on your settings, we may also show you personalized ads based on your interests. For example, if you search for “mountain bikes,” you may see ads for sports equipment on YouTube. You can control what information we use to show you ads by visiting your ad settings in My Ad Center.

  • We don’t show you personalized ads based on sensitive categories, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, or health.
  • We don’t show you personalized ads based on your content from Drive, Gmail, or Photos.
  • We don’t share information that personally identifies you with advertisers, such as your name or email, unless you ask us to. For example, if you see an ad for a nearby flower shop and select the “tap to call” button, we’ll connect your call and may share your phone number with the flower shop.

Go to My Ad Center

Measure performance

We use data for analytics and measurement to understand how our services are used. For example, we analyze data about your visits to our sites to do things like optimize product design. And we also use data about the ads you interact with to help advertisers understand the performance of their ad campaigns. We use a variety of tools to do this, including Google Analytics. When you visit sites or use apps that use Google Analytics, a Google Analytics customer may choose to enable Google to link information about your activity from that site or app with activity from other sites or apps that use our ad services.

Communicate with you

We use information we collect, like your email address, to interact with you directly. For example, we may send you a notification if we detect suspicious activity, like an attempt to sign in to your Google Account from an unusual location. Or we may let you know about upcoming changes or improvements to our services. And if you contact Google, we’ll keep a record of your request in order to help solve any issues you might be facing.

Protect Google, our users, and the public

We use information to help improve the safety and reliability of our services. This includes detecting, preventing, and responding to fraud, abuse, security risks, and technical issues that could harm Google, our users, or the public.

We use different technologies to process your information for these purposes. We use automated systems that analyze your content to provide you with things like customized search results, personalized ads, or other features tailored to how you use our services. And we analyze your content to help us detect abuse such as spam, malware, and illegal content. We also use algorithms to recognize patterns in data. For example, Google Translate helps people communicate across languages by detecting common language patterns in phrases you ask it to translate.

We may combine the information we collect among our services and across your devices for the purposes described above. For example, if you watch videos of guitar players on YouTube, you might see an ad for guitar lessons on a site that uses our ad products. Depending on your account settings, your activity on other sites and apps may be associated with your personal information in order to improve Google’s services and the ads delivered by Google.

If other users already have your email address or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible Google Account information, such as your name and photo. This helps people identify an email coming from you, for example.

We’ll ask for your consent before using your information for a purpose that isn’t covered in this Privacy Policy.

YOUR PRIVACY CONTROLS

You have choices regarding the information we collect and how it’s used

This section describes key controls for managing your privacy across our services. You can also visit the Privacy Checkup, which provides an opportunity to review and adjust important privacy settings. In addition to these tools, we also offer specific privacy settings in our products — you can learn more in our Product Privacy Guide.

Go to Privacy Checkup

Managing, reviewing, and updating your information

When you’re signed in, you can always review and update information by visiting the services you use. For example, Photos and Drive are both designed to help you manage specific types of content you’ve saved with Google.

We also built a place for you to review and control information saved in your Google Account. Your Google Account includes:

Privacy controls

Activity Controls

Decide what types of activity you’d like saved in your account. For example, if you have YouTube History turned on, the videos you watch and the things you search for are saved in your account so you can get better recommendations and remember where you left off. And if you have Web & App Activity turned on, your searches and activity from other Google services are saved in your account so you can get more personalized experiences like faster searches and more helpful app and content recommendations. Web & App Activity also has a subsetting that lets you control whether information about your activity on other sites, apps, and devices that use Google services, such as apps you install and use on Android, is saved in your Google Account and used to improve Google services.

Go to Activity Controls

Ad settings

Manage your preferences about the ads shown to you on Google and on sites and apps that partner with Google to show ads. You can modify your interests, choose whether your personal information is used to make ads more relevant to you, and turn on or off certain advertising services.

Go to My Ad Center

About you

Manage personal info in your Google Account and control who can see it across Google services.

Go to About You

Shared endorsements

Choose whether your name and photo appear next to your activity, like reviews and recommendations, that appear in ads.

Go to Shared Endorsements

Sites and apps that use Google services

Manage information that websites and apps using Google services, like Google Analytics, may share with Google when you visit or interact with their services.

Go to How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services

Ways to review & update your information

My Activity

My Activity allows you to review and control data that’s saved to your Google Account when you’re signed in and using Google services, like searches you’ve done or your visits to Google Play. You can browse by date and by topic, and delete part or all of your activity.

Go to My Activity

Google Dashboard

Google Dashboard allows you to manage information associated with specific products.

Go to Dashboard

Your personal information

Manage your contact information, such as your name, email, and phone number.

Go to Personal Info

When you’re signed out, you can manage information associated with your browser or device, including:

  • Signed-out search personalization: Choose whether your search activity is used to offer you more relevant results and recommendations.
  • YouTube settings: Pause and delete your YouTube Search History and your YouTube Watch History.
  • Ad Settings: Manage your preferences about the ads shown to you on Google and on sites and apps that partner with Google to show ads.

Exporting, removing & deleting your information

You can export a copy of content in your Google Account if you want to back it up or use it with a service outside of Google.

Export your data

To delete your information, you can:

Delete your information

Inactive Account Manager allows you to give someone else access to parts of your Google Account in case you’re unexpectedly unable to use your account.

And finally, you can also request to remove content from specific Google services based on applicable law and our policies.

There are other ways to control the information Google collects whether or not you’re signed in to a Google Account, including:

  • Browser settings: For example, you can configure your browser to indicate when Google has set a cookie in your browser. You can also configure your browser to block all cookies from a specific domain or all domains. But remember that our services rely on cookies to function properly, for things like remembering your language preferences.
  • Device-level settings: Your device may have controls that determine what information we collect. For example, you can modify location settings on your Android device.

SHARING YOUR INFORMATION

When you share your information

Many of our services let you share information with other people, and you have control over how you share. For example, you can share videos on YouTube publicly or you can decide to keep your videos private. Remember, when you share information publicly, your content may become accessible through search engines, including Google Search.

When you’re signed in and interact with some Google services, like leaving comments on a YouTube video or reviewing an app in Play, your name and photo appear next to your activity. We may also display this information in ads depending on your Shared endorsements setting.

When Google shares your information

We do not share your personal information with companies, organizations, or individuals outside of Google except in the following cases:

With your consent

We’ll share personal information outside of Google when we have your consent. For example, if you use Google Home to make a reservation through a booking service, we’ll get your permission before sharing your name or phone number with the restaurant. We also provide you with controls to review and manage third party apps and sites you have given access to data in your Google Account. We’ll ask for your explicit consent to share any sensitive personal information.

With domain administrators

If you’re a student or work for an organization that uses Google services, your domain administrator and resellers who manage your account will have access to your Google Account. They may be able to:

  • Access and retain information stored in your account, like your email
  • View statistics regarding your account, like how many apps you install
  • Change your account password
  • Suspend or terminate your account access
  • Receive your account information in order to satisfy applicable law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request
  • Restrict your ability to delete or edit your information or your privacy settings

For external processing

We provide personal information to our affiliates and other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures. For example, we use service providers to help operate our data centers, deliver our products and services, improve our internal business processes, and offer additional support to customers and users. We also use service providers to help review YouTube video content for public safety and analyze and listen to samples of saved user audio to help improve Google’s audio recognition technologies.

For legal reasons

We will share personal information outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation, or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:

  • Meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request. We share information about the number and type of requests we receive from governments in our Transparency Report.
  • Enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.
  • Detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues.
  • Protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users, or the public as required or permitted by law.

We may share non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners — like publishers, advertisers, developers, or rights holders. For example, we share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services. We also allow specific partners to collect information from your browser or device for advertising and measurement purposes using their own cookies or similar technologies.

If Google is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, we’ll continue to ensure the confidentiality of your personal information and give affected users notice before personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

KEEPING YOUR INFORMATION SECURE

We build security into our services to protect your information

All Google products are built with strong security features that continuously protect your information. The insights we gain from maintaining our services help us detect and automatically block security threats from ever reaching you. And if we do detect something risky that we think you should know about, we’ll notify you and help guide you through steps to stay better protected.

We work hard to protect you and Google from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction of information we hold, including:

  • We use encryption to keep your data private while in transit
  • We offer a range of security features, like Safe Browsing, Security Checkup, and 2 Step Verification to help you protect your account
  • We review our information collection, storage, and processing practices, including physical security measures, to prevent unauthorized access to our systems
  • We restrict access to personal information to Google employees, contractors, and agents who need that information in order to process it. Anyone with this access is subject to strict contractual confidentiality obligations and may be disciplined or terminated if they fail to meet these obligations.

EXPORTING & DELETING YOUR INFORMATION

You can export a copy of your information or delete it from your Google Account at any time

You can export a copy of content in your Google Account if you want to back it up or use it with a service outside of Google.

Export your data

To delete your information, you can:

Delete your information

RETAINING YOUR INFORMATION

We retain the data we collect for different periods of time depending on what it is, how we use it, and how you configure your settings:

  • Some data you can delete whenever you like, such as your personal info or the content you create or upload, like photos and documents. You can also delete activity information saved in your account, or choose to have it deleted automatically after a set period of time. We’ll keep this data in your Google Account until you remove it or choose to have it removed.
  • Other data is deleted or anonymized automatically after a set period of time, such as advertising data in server logs.
  • We keep some data until you delete your Google Account, such as information about how often you use our services.
  • And some data we retain for longer periods of time when necessary for legitimate business or legal purposes, such as security, fraud and abuse prevention, or financial record-keeping.

When you delete data, we follow a deletion process to make sure that your data is safely and completely removed from our servers or retained only in anonymized form. We try to ensure that our services protect information from accidental or malicious deletion. Because of this, there may be delays between when you delete something and when copies are deleted from our active and backup systems.

You can read more about Google’s data retention periods, including how long it takes us to delete your information.

COMPLIANCE & COOPERATION WITH REGULATORS

We regularly review this Privacy Policy and make sure that we process your information in ways that comply with it.

Data transfers

We maintain servers around the world and your information may be processed on servers located outside of the country where you live. Data protection laws vary among countries, with some providing more protection than others. Regardless of where your information is processed, we apply the same protections described in this policy. We also comply with certain legal frameworks relating to the transfer of data.

When we receive formal written complaints, we respond by contacting the person who made the complaint. We work with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of your data that we cannot resolve with you directly.

U.S. state law requirements

Some U.S. state privacy laws require specific disclosures.

This Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand how Google handles your information:

  • We explain the categories of information Google collects and the sources of that information in Information Google collects.
  • We explain the purposes for which Google collects and uses information in Why Google collects data.
  • We explain when Google may disclose information in Sharing your information. Google does not sell your personal information. Google also does not “share” your personal information as that term is defined in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
  • We explain how Google retains information in Retaining your information. You can also learn more about how Google anonymizes data. As described there, when Google anonymizes data to protect your privacy, we maintain policies and technical measures to avoid re-identifying that information.

U.S. state privacy laws also provide the right to request information about how Google collects, uses, and discloses your information. And they give you the right to access your information, sometimes in a portable format; correct your information; and to request that Google delete that information. Many of these laws also provide the right to opt out of certain forms of profiling and targeted advertising. They also provide the right to not be discriminated against for exercising these privacy rights. Finally, the CCPA treats certain kinds of information, like health data, as sensitive; when users provide this information, Google only uses it for purposes permitted by the CCPA, like to provide services that are requested and expected by our users.

We describe the choices you have to manage your privacy and data across Google’s services in Your privacy controls. These tools allow you to access, review, update and delete your information, as well as export and download a copy of it. You can also control what information we use to show you ads, or turn off personalized ads, by visiting My Ad Center.

When you use these tools, we’ll validate your request by verifying that you’re signed in to your Google Account. If you have questions or requests related to your rights under U.S. state privacy laws, you (or your authorized agent) can also contact Google. And if you disagree with the decision on your request, you can ask Google to reconsider it by responding to our email.

We also provide more information on Google’s handling of CCPA requests.

Some U.S. state privacy laws also require a description of data practices using specific categories. This table uses these categories to organize the information in this Privacy Policy.

Categories of information we collect

Identifiers and similar information such as your name and password, phone number, and address, as well as unique identifiers tied to the browser, application, or device you’re using. Some Google services like YouTube Studio provide the option to submit a valid ID (such as a passport or driver’s license) to verify your identity to use additional features.

Demographic information, such as your age, gender and language. If you choose to use optional features like YouTube Creator Demographics, you can also provide additional information, like your gender identity or race and ethnicity.

Commercial information such as your payment information and a history of purchases you make on Google’s services.

Biometric information if you choose to provide it, such as fingerprints in Google’s product development studies.

Internet, network, and other activity information such as your search terms; views and interactions with content and ads; Chrome browsing history you’ve synced with your Google Account; information about the interaction of your apps, browsers, and devices with our services (like IP address, crash reports, and system activity); and activity on third-party sites and apps that use our services. You can review and control activity data stored in your Google Account in My Activity.

Geolocation data, such as may be determined by GPS, IP address, and other data from sensors on or around your device, depending in part on your device and account settings. Depending on these settings, this may include precise location data, for example GPS data for Android features like navigation or finding your phone. Learn more about Google’s use of location information.

Audio, electronic, visual, and similar information, such as voice and audio information.

Communications data, such as emails, if you use our services to send and receive messages.

Health information if you choose to provide it, such as your medical history, vital signs and health metrics (like blood glucose levels), and other similar information related to your physical or mental health, in the course of using Google services that offer health-related features, such as the Google Health Studies app.

Professional, employment, and education information, such as information you provide or that is maintained through an organization using Google services at which you study or work.

Other information you create or provide, such as the content you create, upload, or receive (like photos and videos or emails, docs and spreadsheets). Google Dashboard allows you to manage information associated with specific products.

Inferences drawn from the above, like your ads interest categories.

Business purposes for which information may be used or disclosed

Protecting against security threats, abuse, and illegal activity: Google uses and may disclose information to detect, prevent and respond to security incidents, and for protecting against other malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity. For example, to protect our services, Google may receive or disclose information about IP addresses that malicious actors have compromised.

Auditing and measurement: Google uses information for analytics and measurement to understand how our services are used, as well as to fulfill obligations to our partners like publishers, advertisers, developers, or rights holders. We may disclose non-personally identifiable information publicly and with these partners, including for auditing purposes.

Maintaining our services: Google uses information to ensure our services are working as intended, such as tracking outages or troubleshooting bugs and other issues that you report to us.

Research and development: Google uses information to improve our services and to develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public. For example, we use publicly available information to help train Google’s AI models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities.

Use of service providers: Google shares information with service providers to perform services on our behalf, in compliance with our Privacy Policy and other appropriate confidentiality and security measures. For example, we may rely on service providers to help provide customer support.

Advertising: Google processes information to provide advertising, including online identifiers, browsing and search activity, and information about your location and interactions with advertisements. This keeps Google’s services and many of the websites and services you use free of charge. You can control what information we use to show you ads by visiting your ad settings in My Ad Center.

Legal reasons: Google also uses information to satisfy applicable laws or regulations, and discloses information in response to legal process or enforceable government requests, including to law enforcement. We provide information about the number and type of requests we receive from governments in our Transparency Report.

Parties with whom information may be disclosed

Other people with whom you choose to share your information, like docs or photos, and videos or comments on YouTube.

Third parties with your consent, such as services that integrate with Google’s services. You can review and manage third party apps and sites with access to data in your Google Account.

Service providers, trusted businesses, or persons that process information on Google’s behalf, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

Domain administrators, if you work or study at an organization that uses Google services.

Law enforcement or other third parties, for the legal reasons described in Sharing your information.

ABOUT THIS POLICY

When this policy applies

This Privacy Policy applies to all of the services offered by Google LLC and its affiliates, including YouTube, Android, and services offered on third-party sites, such as advertising services. This Privacy Policy doesn’t apply to services that have separate privacy policies that do not incorporate this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy doesn’t apply to:

  • The information practices of other companies and organizations that advertise our services
  • Services offered by other companies or individuals, including products or sites they offer that may include Google services to which the policy applies, or products or sites displayed to you in search results, or linked from our services

Changes to this policy

We change this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. We always indicate the date the last changes were published and we offer access to archived versions for your review. If changes are significant, we’ll provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, email notification of Privacy Policy changes).

RELATED PRIVACY PRACTICES

Specific Google services

The following privacy notices provide additional information about some Google services:

If you’re a member of an organization that uses Google Workspace or Google Cloud Platform, learn how these services collect and use your personal information in the Google Cloud Privacy Notice.

Other useful resources

The following links highlight useful resources for you to learn more about our practices and privacy settings.

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EPN Privacy Notice:

Scope and Consent

This Privacy Notice describes how eBay Partner Network, Inc. (“EPN”) collects, uses, discloses, retains, and protects your personal information. It applies to any EPN site where this Privacy Notice appears in the footer, and to any EPN application, service, or tool (collectively “Services”) where this Privacy Notice is referenced, regardless of how you access or use them, including through mobile devices.

You are contracting with eBay Partner Network, Inc. The company you are contracting with is your data controller, and is responsible for the collection, use, disclosure, retention and protection of your personal information in accordance with our global privacy standards as well as any applicable national laws. Your data controller may transfer data to other members of the eBay Inc. corporate family as described in this Privacy Notice. We may process and retain your personal information on our servers in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world where our data centers are located.

We may change this notice from time to time, and we will post the amended terms at https://partnernetwork.ebay.com/legal and notify you by email of major changes. Amended terms will take effect immediately for new users, and 5 days after they are posted for existing users.

Personal Information We Collect

What is Personal Information?

Personal Information is information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. An identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier, or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.

We do not consider personal information to include information that has been anonymized or aggregated so that it can no longer be used to identify a specific natural person, whether in combination with other information or otherwise.

We collect personal information from you when you use our Services.

We collect personal information from you and any devices (including mobile devices) you use when you: use our Services, register for an account with us, provide us information on a web form, update or add information to your account, participate in a community board discussion chat, or when you otherwise correspond with us.

Some of this personal information, such as a way to identify you, is necessary to enter into our User Agreement. The provision of all other personal information is voluntary, but may be necessary in order to use our Services, such as the bidding, buying or selling information needed to conclude a transaction.

We may also collect personal information from other sources, as described below.

Personal information you give us when you use our Services or register for an account with us

  • Identifying information such as your name, addresses, telephone numbers or email addresses when you register for an account with us.
  • Bidding, buying, or selling information you provide during a transaction, or other transaction-based content that you generate or that is connected to your account as a result of a transaction you are involved in.
  • Other content that you generate, or that is connected to your account (such as adding items to your basket, adding items to your Watch List, creating collections, and following other collections and sellers).
  • Financial information (such as credit card or bank account numbers) in connection with a transaction.
  • Postage, billing and other information used to purchase or send an item, as well as, where postal services are provided through one of our programs, information required to clear customs (such as Tax ID or other identification numbers) and relevant postage information (such as tracking numbers and tracking updates).
  • In some instances, when you use our Services, you may provide age, gender, interests and favorites.
  • You may also provide us other information through a web form, by updating or adding information to your account, through your participation in community discussions, member-to-member communications, chats, dispute resolution, or when you otherwise communicate with us regarding our Services.
  • Additional information we are required or authorized by applicable national laws to collect and process in order to authenticate or identify you or to verify the information we have collected.

Personal information we collect automatically when you use our Services or register for an account with us

  • We collect information about your interaction with our Services, your advertising preferences, and your communications with us. This is information we receive from devices (including mobile devices) you use when you access our Services. This information could include the following: Device ID or unique identifier, device type, ID for advertising, and unique device token.
  • Location information, including location information from your mobile device. Keep in mind that most mobile devices allow you to control or disable the use of location services by any application on your mobile device in the device’s settings menu.
  • Computer and connection information such as statistics on your page views, traffic to and from the sites, referral URL, ad data, your IP address, your browsing history, and your web log information.

Personal information we collect using cookies and similar technologies

  • We use cookies, web beacons, unique identifiers, and similar technologies to collect information about the pages you view, the links you click, and other actions you take when using our Services, within our advertising or email content.
  • For more information about our use of these technologies, and how to control them, see Cookies and Similar Technologies.

Personal information collected from other sources

  • We supplement the personal information we collect directly with information collected from third parties and add it to your account information. For example, we collect and use demographic and other information that is publically available in an applicable jurisdiction, additional contact information, credit check information, and information from credit bureaus, as allowed by applicable national laws
  • Social Media. We allow you to share information with social media sites, or use social media sites to create your account or to connect your account with the respective social media site. Those social media sites may give us automatic access to certain personal information retained by them about you (e.g., content viewed by you, content liked by you, and information about the advertisements you have been shown or have clicked on, etc.). If you provide us with access to any site with video content, then you agree that we can share your video viewing with, or obtain information about your video viewing from, third-party social media sites for at least two years or until you withdraw authorization or connection to the social media site. You control the personal information you allow us to have access to through the privacy settings on the applicable social media site and the permissions you give us when you grant us access to the personal information retained by the respective social media site about you. By associating an account managed by a social media site with your account and authorizing us to have access to this information, you agree that we can collect, use and retain the information provided by these social media sites in accordance with this privacy notice. We may also use plug-ins or other technologies from various social media sites. If you click on a link provided via a social media plug in, you are voluntarily establishing a connection with that respective social media site.
  • If you give us personal information about someone else, you must do so only with that person’s authorization. You should inform them how we collect, use, disclose, and retain their personal information according to our privacy notice.

How We use Your Personal Information

We use your personal information to provide and improve our Services, provide you with a personalized experience on our sites, contact you about your account and our Services, provide you customer service, provide you with personalized advertising and marketing, and to detect, prevent, mitigate and investigate fraudulent or illegal activities.

We use the personal information we collect from you for a range of different business purposes and according to different legal bases of processing. The following is a summary of how and according to which legal bases we use your personal information.

We use your personal information to fulfill a contract with you and provide you with our Services, to comply with our legal obligation, protect your vital interest, or as may be required for the public good. This includes:

  • To provide payment processing and account management, operate, measure and improve our Services, keep our Services safe, secure and operational, and customize site content that includes items and services that you may like in response to actions that you take.
  • To run the eBay Partner Network and its Programs, as described in the EPN Network Agreement (including, for example, providing tracking and reporting, and compensating you for your participation) and providing you with information and services you request.
  • To contact you regarding your account, to troubleshoot problems with your account, to resolve a dispute, to collect fees or monies owed or as otherwise necessary to provide you customer service.
    • When contacting you for such purposes as outlined above, we may contact you via email, telephone, SMS/text messages, postal mail, and via mobile push notifications.
    • When contacting you via telephone, to ensure efficiency, we may use autodialed or pre-recorded calls and text messages as described in our User Agreement and as authorized by applicable law. Message and data rates may apply.
  • To provide other services requested by you as described when we collect the information.
  • We use general location information to provide you with location based services (such as advertising, search results, and other personalized content).
  • To prevent, detect, mitigate, and investigate fraud, security breaches or other potentially prohibited or illegal activities.
  • To enforce our User Agreement, this privacy notice, or other policies, and to monitor restrictions on offers to buy or sell outside of eBay and member-to-member communications for violations of our policies or applicable laws.

We use your personal information to pursue our legitimate interests where your rights and freedoms do not outweigh these interests.  We have implemented controls to balance our interests with your rights.  This includes to:

  • Improve our Services, for example by reviewing information associated with stalled or crashed pages experienced by users allowing us to identify and fix problems and give you a better experience.
  • Personalize, measure, and improve our advertising based on your advertising customization preferences.
  • Contact you via email or postal mail in order to offer you coupons, discounts and special promotions, poll your opinions through surveys or questionnaires and inform you about our Services, as authorized by applicable law.
  • Contact you about public policy matters, or other current events, related to your ability to use our Services. This could include an invitation to join a petition, letter writing, call or other sort of public policy related campaigns.
  • Deliver targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers based on your communication preferences.
  • Measure the performance of our email marketing campaigns (e.g. by analyzing open and click rates).
  • Measure sellers’ performance (e.g. by using shipment tracking information that sellers and shipping providers send or provide through eBay).
  • Monitor and improve the information security of our site and mobile applications.

With your consent, we may use your personal information to:

  • Provide you with marketing via telephone calls, email, SMS or text.
  • Provide you with marketing from other eBay Inc. corporate family members.
  • Provide you with marketing from third parties.
  • Customize third party advertising you might see on third party websites.
  • Use your precise geo-location to provide location based services.
  • Use your sensitive personal information to facilitate transactions in certain categories.

You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

We may use technologies considered automated decision making or profiling. We will not make automated-decisions about you that would significantly affect you, unless such a decision is necessary as part of a contract we have with you, we have your consent, or we are required by law to use such technology.

Your choices about how we use your personal information

You have choices about how we use your personal information to communicate with you, to send you marketing information, how we provide you with customized and relevant advertising, and whether you want to stay signed into your account.

Communication preferences

You can control your email communication preferences in the Communication Preference section within your My eBay. There, you can also control your member-to-member communications preferences setting and choose which newsletters and promotions you want to receive.

Marketing

If you do not wish to receive marketing communications from us, you can unsubscribe via the link in an email you received, change your Communication Preferences within My eBay, indicate your communication preferences using the method described within the direct communication from us or contact us as described in the Contact Us section below. Keep in mind, we do not sell, rent, or otherwise disclose your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your consent.

Advertising

If you do not wish to participate in our advertising personalization programs, you can opt-out by following the directions provided within the applicable advertisement, or through the programs described in our User Cookie Notice. The effect of an opt-out will be to stop personalized advertising, but it will still allow the collection of personal information as otherwise described in this privacy notice. We do not allow third parties to track or collect your personal information on our sites for their own advertising purposes, without your consent.

Staying Signed in

When you sign in to your account on our Services, we give you the option to stay signed in to your account for certain amount of time. If you are using a public or shared computer, we encourage you not to choose to stay signed in. You or any other user of the computer/browser you signed in on will be able to view and access most parts of your account and take certain specific actions during this signed in period without any further authorization. The specific actions and account activities that you or any other user of this computer/browser may take include:

  • Bid, buy or make an offer on an item
  • Check out or add items to your cart
  • Purchase an item with PayPal using Faster Checkout (if enabled in your account)
  • View the activity header
  • View the My eBay page
  • View or edit the Watch List or order details
  • View the profile page
  • Send member-to-member messages
  • Conduct after-sale activities, like leaving Feedback, canceling orders, requesting returns or submitting claims

If you attempt to change your password, User ID, update any other account information or attempt other account activity beyond those listed above, you may be required to enter your password.

You can typically end your signed in session by either signing out and/or clearing your cookies. If you have certain browser privacy settings enabled, simply closing your browser may also end your signed in session. If you are using a public or shared computer, you should sign out and/or clear your cookies when you are done using our Services to protect your account and your personal information.

Ways you can access, control, and correct your personal information 

We respect your right to access, correct, request deletion or request restriction of our usage of your personal information as required by applicable law. We also take steps to ensure that the personal information we collect is accurate and up to date.

  • You have the right to know what personal information we maintain about you
  • We will provide you with a copy of your personal information in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format on request
  • If your personal information is incorrect or incomplete, you have the right to ask us to update it
  • You have the right to object to our processing of your personal information
  • You can also ask us to delete or restrict how we use your personal information, but this right is determined by applicable law and may impact your access to some of our Services

Access, correction, and deletion of your personal information

You can see, review and change most of your personal information by signing in to your account. Please, update your personal information immediately if it changes or is inaccurate. Keep in mind, once you make a public posting, you may not be able to change or remove it.

We will honor any statutory right you might have to access, modify or erase your personal information. To request access and to find out whether any fees may apply, if permitted by applicable national laws, please contact us following the instructions in the Contact Us section below. Where you have a statutory right to request access or request the modification or erasure of your personal information, we can still withhold that access or decline to modify or erase your personal information in some cases in accordance with applicable national laws.

If you request that we stop processing some or all of your personal information or you withdraw (where applicable) your consent for our use or disclosure of your personal information for purposes set out in this privacy notice, we might not be able to provide you all of the Services and customer support offered to our users and authorized under this privacy notice and our User Agreement.

Upon your request, we will close your account and remove your personal information from view as soon as reasonably possible, based on your account activity and in accordance with applicable national laws.

How We Might Share Your Personal Information

We may disclose your personal information to other members of the eBay Inc. corporate family or to third parties. This disclosure may be required for us to provide you access to our Services, to comply with our legal obligations, to enforce our User Agreement, to facilitate our marketing and advertising activities, or to prevent, detect, mitigate, and investigate fraudulent or illegal activities related to our Services. We attempt to minimize the amount of personal information we disclose to what is directly relevant and necessary to accomplish the specified purpose. We do not sell, rent, or otherwise disclose your personal information to third parties for their marketing and advertising purposes without your consent.

We may disclose your personal information to the following parties for the following purposes:

eBay Inc. corporate family members, who may use it to:

  • Provide joint content and services (like registration, transactions, and customer support)
  • Help detect, investigate, mitigate and prevent potentially fraudulent and illegal acts, violations of our User Agreement, and data security breaches
  • Provide you personalized advertising
  • Improve their products, sites, applications, services, tools, and marketing communications.
  • Members of our eBay Inc. corporate family will use your personal information to send you marketing communications only if you have consented to receive such communications from them or if otherwise permitted by the law.

Service Providers and financial institutions partners as follows:

  • Third party service providers who help us to provide our Services, payment processing services, assist us in providing customize advertising, to assist us with the prevention, detection, mitigation, and investigation of potentially illegal acts, violations of our User Agreement, fraud and/or security breaches, bill collection, affiliate and rewards programs, co-branded credit cards and other business operations.
  • Third party financial institutions with whom we partner to offer financial products to you, for them to provide joint content and services (such as, registration, transactions and customer support). These third party financial institution partners will use your personal information to send you marketing communications only if you have requested their services.
  • Third party shipping providers (e.g., DHL, UPS, USPS, etc.) with whom we share delivery address, contact information and shipment tracking information for the purposes of facilitating the delivery of items purchased and other delivery related communications.
  • Third party providers of websites, applications, services and tools that we cooperate with so that they can publish or advertise your listings and their content on their websites or in their applications, services and tools. If we transfer personal information along with the content of your listings to third party providers, this will be solely on the basis of an agreement limiting use by the third party provider of such personal information to processing necessary to fulfil their contract with us and obligating the third party provider to take security measures with regard to such data. Third party providers are not permitted to sell, lease or in any other way transfer the personal information included in your listings to third parties.

Law enforcement, legal proceedings, and as authorized by law

  • To comply with our legal requirements, enforce our User Agreement, respond to claims that a listing or other content violates the rights of others, or protect anyone’s rights, property or safety.
  • To law enforcement or governmental agencies, or authorized third-parties, in response to a verified request or legal process relating to a criminal investigation or alleged or suspected illegal activity or any other activity that exposes us, you, or any other of our users to legal liability. We will only disclose information we deem relevant 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.
  • To participants of the eBay VeRO Program globally under confidentiality agreement, as we in our sole discretion deem necessary or appropriate in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, piracy, or other unlawful activity. In such events, we will disclose seller’s name, street address, city, state, postcode, country, phone number, email address and company name to the participants of the eBay VeRO Program.
  • To credit agencies or bureaus as authorized by applicable national laws (e.g. information on late or missed payments or other defaults on your account that may be reflected in your credit report or file).
  • To third parties involved in a legal proceeding, if they provide us with a subpoena, court order or substantially similar legal basis, or we otherwise believe in good faith that the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss or to report suspected illegal activity.

Other eBay users as authorized by you or your use of our Services

  • When transacting with another user, the other user may request that we provide him/her with information about you necessary to complete the transaction, such as your name, account ID, email address, contact details, shipping and billing address, or other information from you needed to promote the reliability and security of the transaction.
  • If a transaction fails, is put on hold, or is later invalidated, we may also provide the other user with details of the unsuccessful transaction
  • The other user receiving your information should only use it for purposes related to the transaction. Unless you have consented to receive marketing from them, they should not contact you for marketing purposes.
  • Contacting users with unwanted or threatening messages is a violation of our User Agreement.

We may disclose your personal information to PayPal Inc. and its corporate family

  • To prevent, detect, mitigate, and investigate potentially illegal acts, fraud and/or security breaches, and to assess and manage risk, including to alert you if fraudulent activities have been detected on your eBay or PayPal accounts
  • To provide customer services, including to help service your account or resolve disputes (e.g., billing or transactional disputes)
  • To facilitate the processing of payment cards when you pay within our Services with a payment card and we use PayPal to process your payment
  • To facilitate shipping and related services for purchases you made using PayPal

Change of Ownership

If we are subject to a merger or acquisition with/by another company, we may share information with them in accordance with our global privacy standards. Should such an event occur, we will require that the new combined entity follow this privacy notice with respect to your personal information. If we intend to handle your personal information for any purposes not covered in this privacy notice, you will receive prior notification of the processing of your personal information for the new purposes.

How long we keep your personal information 

We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to provide the Services you have requested, or for other essential purposes such as complying with our legal obligations, resolving disputes, and enforcing our policies.

Our specific retention times for personal information are documented in our regional records retention schedules. How long we retain personal information can vary significantly based on context of the Services we provide and on our legal obligations. The following factors typically influence retention periods:

  • How long is the personal information needed to provide our Services? This includes such things as maintaining and improving the performance of our products, keeping our systems secure, and maintaining appropriate business and financial records. This is the general rule that establishes the baseline for most of our data retention periods.
  • Is the personal information sensitive? If so, a shortened retention time is generally appropriate.
  • Have you provided consent for a longer retention period? If so, we will retain data in accordance with your consent.
  • Are we subject to a legal, contractual, or similar obligation to retain your personal information? Examples can include mandatory data retention laws in the applicable jurisdiction, government orders to preserve data relevant to an investigation, or personal information retained for the purposes of litigation.

After it is no longer necessary for us to retain your personal information, we will dispose of it in a secure manner according to our data retention and deletion policies.

Cookies and similar technologies 

When you visit or interact with our sites, services, applications, tools or messaging, we or our authorized service providers may use cookies and other similar technologies to help provide you with a better, faster, and safer experience, and for advertising and marketing purposes. You can read our full User Cookie Notice for more information.

How do we protect your personal information 

We protect your personal information using technical and administrative security measures to reduce the risks of loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure and alteration. Some of the safeguards we use are firewalls and data encryption, physical access controls to our data centers, and information access authorization controls. For more information about staying safe while buying and selling online, or to report an issue with your account please visit our Security Center.

Global privacy standards 

We have established a set of global privacy standards for all eBay Inc. companies known as our Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs). They are our commitment to protect your personal information and honor our privacy obligations within our eBay Inc. corporate family. More information about our BCRs and our global privacy standards is available at our eBay Privacy Center.

Data Controllers and Data Protection Officers

Data Controllers and Data Protection Officers

If you reside in the United States, you are contracting with eBay Inc., 2025 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125, USA and, if you use our payments services, also with eBay Commerce Inc., 2025 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125, USA, for such payments services. 

If you reside outside of the United States, you are contracting with one of our international eBay companies, as follows:

  • If you reside in Canada you are contracting with eBay Canada Limited, 500 King Street West, Suite 200, Toronto, ON M5V 1L9, Canada;
  • If you reside in a country within the European Union (except the United Kingdom) you are contracting with eBay GmbH, Albert-Einstein-Ring 2-6, 14532 Kleinmachnow, Germany;
  • If you reside in the United Kingdom you are contracting with eBay (UK) Limited, 5 New Street Square, London, EC4A 3TW, United Kingdom;
  • If you reside in any other country, you are contracting with eBay Marketplaces GmbH, Helvetiastrasse 15/17, 3005 Bern, Switzerland.
  • If you use our eBay Customer Guarantee services and reside in France, Italy or Spain, you are also contracting with eBay Services S.à r.l, 22-24 Boulevard Royal, 2449 Luxembourg for such specific services.

The company you are contracting with is your data controller, and is responsible for the collection, use, disclosure, retention and protection of your personal information in accordance with our global privacy standards, this privacy notice, as well as any applicable national laws.

Your data controller may transfer data to other members of the eBay Inc. corporate family who have signed our BCRs, as described in this privacy notice.

We may process and retain your personal information on our servers in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world where our data centers are located.

Where we have a legal obligation to do so, we have appointed data protection officers (DPOs) to be responsible for the privacy program at each of the respective data controllers.

Other important privacy information

This section describes some additional privacy information related to your use of our Services that you may find important.

When you share your personal information on our sites or applications – what happens?

Other users have access to the information you share on eBay. For example, other users can see your bids, purchases, items for sale, your collections, the sellers and collections you follow, storefronts, feedback, ratings, product reviews and associated comments. Other users can also see any information you chose to share in your profile or your collections.

When you use our Services, your public user ID may be displayed and available to the public and associated with all of your public eBay activity. Notices sent to other users about suspicious activity and notice violations on our sites may refer to your public user ID and specific items. If you associate your name with your user ID, the people to whom you have revealed your name may then be able to identify your eBay activities.

To help protect your privacy, we allow only limited access to other users’ contact, shipping and financial information as necessary to facilitate your transactions and collect payments. However, when users are involved in a transaction, they have access to each other’s name, user ID, email address and other contact and shipping information.

Your responsibilities over transactional information you receive through eBay

When you transact with another user, we enable you to obtain or we may provide you with the personal information of the other user (such as their name, account ID, email address, contact details, shipping and billing address) to complete the transaction. Independent from us, you are the controller of such data and we encourage you to inform the other user about your privacy practices and respect their privacy. In all cases, you must comply with the applicable privacy laws, and must give the other user a chance to remove them from your database and them a chance to review what information you have collected about them.

You may use the personal information that you have access to only for eBay transaction-related purposes, or for other services offered through eBay (such as escrow, shipping, fraud complaints, and member-to-member communications), and for purposes expressly consented by the user to whom the information relates. Using personal information of other users that you have access to for any other purpose constitutes a violation of our User Agreement.

Unwanted or threatening email

We do not tolerate abuse of our Services. You do not have permission to add other users to your mailing list (email or postal), call, or send him/her text messages for commercial purposes, even if this user purchased something from you, unless the user has given his/her explicit consent. Sending unwanted or threatening email and text messages is against our User Agreement. To report eBay-related spam or spoof emails please forward the email to spam@ebay.com or spoof@ebay.com.

Communication tools

We may scan messages automatically and check for spam, viruses, phishing and other malicious activity, illegal or prohibited content or violations of our User Agreement, this privacy notice or our other policies.

Children’s Privacy

Our websites are general audience websites and not intended for children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from users deemed to be children under their respective national laws.

Third Party Privacy Practices

This privacy notice addresses only our use and handling of personal information we collect from you in connection with providing you our Services. If you disclose your information to a third party, or visit a third party website via a link from our Services, their privacy notices and practices will apply to any personal information you provide to them or they collect from you.

We cannot guarantee the privacy or security of your personal information once you provide it to a third party and we encourage you to evaluate the privacy and security policies of your trading partner before entering into a transaction and choosing to share your personal information. This is true even where the third parties to whom you disclose personal information are bidders, buyers or sellers on our site.

How to Contact Us

If you have a question or a complaint about this privacy notice, our global privacy standards, or our information handling practices, you can reach the Global Privacy Office in writing at: eBay Inc, Attn: Legal – Global Privacy Office, 2065 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, California 95125, USA.

You can find more information on how to contact us and our data protection officers at our eBay Privacy Center

Your right to file complaints with a data protection supervisory authority remains unaffected.