Privacy Policy

BuyThis.ie is an online classified advertising and messaging marketplace serving users in Ireland. The platform is operated by [Operator legal name] ("BuyThis.ie", "we", "us"), which is the data controller responsible for the personal data described in this policy.

Full operator identification details — including registered legal name, company registration number, VAT number and registered postal address — will be published here once finalised. Until then, all privacy questions and data-rights requests should be sent through the Contact Us page.

Depending on how you use BuyThis.ie, we may process:

Account and profile data

• name or display name, email address and sign-in method (including Google sign-in)
• optional profile photo, county and town
• your seller type (private seller or business seller) and when it was chosen
• account settings, notification and privacy preferences

Business seller / trader data

• trading or business name, business address, business email and business phone
• company registration number and VAT number where provided

Marketplace activity

• listing content, listing details and listing photographs
• messages you send and receive through the platform
• reviews, ratings and reputation information
• saved ads and your private browsing history of listings you opened
• reports you file, reports made about you, and moderation records
• support and contact communications

Payments for BuyThis.ie services

• promotion / Boost purchase records: plan purchased, amount, currency, dates
• payment transaction references and payment status returned by our payment processor

Technical data

• IP address, device and browser information
• technical and error logs
• security, abuse and fraud-prevention signals

Some of this information is intentionally public: your display name, profile photo, member-since date, seller type, published listings, listing photographs, and reviews and ratings you receive. Everything else — including your email address, browsing history, saved ads, account settings, messages, reports and payment records — is private account information and is not shown to other users.

If your account is set to private seller, BuyThis.ie may publicly display your display name and profile photo, your private seller status, your public seller profile, your active published listings and your reputation and reviews.

Your personal email address, phone number and home address are not published automatically. Contact details only become visible to another user if you choose to include them in a listing, a message or your profile text.

If you sell in the course of a business, trade or profession, you must select business seller and supply trader information: trading name, business address, business email and business phone, plus company registration number and VAT number where these apply to you.

Business and trader identification and contact information may be displayed publicly on your seller profile and alongside your listings, where this is necessary to operate the marketplace transparently or to comply with applicable consumer and e-commerce law.

• create, authenticate and manage your account
• publish, display and manage listings, including expiry and renewal
• enable messaging between buyers and sellers
• operate public seller profiles, reviews and reputation
• provide saved ads and your private browsing history
• receive and process reports and moderate listings, messages and reviews
• prevent and investigate fraud, scams, abuse and misuse of the platform
• keep BuyThis.ie and its users secure
• provide customer support and respond to your enquiries
• send account and service notifications
• provide Featured Ads and Boost promotions and process payments for them
• meet legal, regulatory, accounting and tax obligations
• maintain, troubleshoot and improve the platform

• Performance of a contract — creating and running your account, publishing your listings, delivering messages, and providing paid promotions you have purchased.
• Legitimate interests — keeping the marketplace safe and trustworthy: moderation, fraud and scam prevention, security, abuse investigations, reputation and reviews, service improvement and direct service communications. We balance these interests against your rights and freedoms.
• Legal obligations — retaining transaction and accounting records, responding to lawful requests, and meeting consumer, tax and e-commerce requirements, including trader transparency duties.
• Consent — only where consent is genuinely required, for example non-essential cookies or optional marketing if these are introduced. You can withdraw consent at any time without affecting processing carried out before withdrawal.

Consent is not the lawful basis for the core operation of your account or the marketplace.

Payments for BuyThis.ie paid platform services — such as Featured Ads and Boost promotions — are processed by Stripe. Card details are entered on Stripe's own hosted checkout.

• full payment card numbers and CVC codes are handled by Stripe and are not stored by BuyThis.ie
• we receive and store payment-related records such as the transaction or session identifier, payment status, amount, currency, the promotion purchased and the relevant dates
• Stripe processes personal data as an independent processor under its own privacy practices

Payments between buyers and sellers for advertised items are arranged privately between those users and are not handled by BuyThis.ie.

Messages you send through BuyThis.ie are stored so the conversation can be delivered and shown to you and the other participant. Conversations are private between the buyer and the seller.

We may retain or access message content where this is reasonably necessary to handle a user report, protect user safety, prevent or investigate fraud or abuse, comply with a legal obligation or lawful request, or resolve a dispute or support case. We do not routinely monitor private conversations.

Ratings, written reviews and aggregate reputation information are displayed publicly on seller profiles and are processed to help users judge who they are dealing with and to maintain trust and integrity on the marketplace. Reviews that breach our rules may be removed following moderation.

When you report a listing, user, message or review, we process the report, your account identifier and the reported content in order to investigate:

• fraud and scams
• illegal content and prohibited listings
• counterfeit or misdescribed items
• harassment and abusive behaviour
• spam and other marketplace abuse
• breaches of the BuyThis.ie Terms & Conditions

Moderation outcomes — such as listing removal, suspension or enforcement history — are recorded so decisions can be applied consistently and reviewed.

BuyThis.ie uses cookies, local storage and similar technologies that are necessary to provide the service, including:

• signing you in and keeping your session active
• security and abuse prevention
• remembering preferences such as your light or dark theme choice
• core platform functionality

These strictly necessary technologies do not require consent. We do not use analytics, advertising or marketing trackers. If non-essential technologies are introduced in future, they will only be used after you have given consent where the law requires it, with a way to withdraw it.

Full details are in our Cookie Policy, and you can review or change your choices any time in Cookie Settings.

We use a small number of trusted providers to run the platform. They act on our instructions under contract and may only use personal data to provide their service. The categories are:

• cloud hosting, database and file storage infrastructure
• authentication infrastructure, including Google sign-in when you choose it
• payment processing (Stripe) for BuyThis.ie paid services
• email and service-notification delivery
• security, logging, error monitoring and fraud-prevention tooling

Personal data may be shared:

• with the service providers listed above, where needed to operate BuyThis.ie
• with other users, where you intentionally make information public — for example your profile, listings, reviews or trader details
• where we are required to do so by law, court order or a valid request from a public authority
• where necessary to investigate fraud, protect user safety or defend legal claims
• in connection with a merger, acquisition or other legitimate business restructuring, where permitted by law and subject to equivalent protection

We do not sell your personal data for unrelated third-party marketing purposes.

Our infrastructure and service providers may process personal data outside the European Economic Area. Where that happens, we rely on a transfer mechanism recognised under GDPR — such as an adequacy decision or standard contractual clauses with additional safeguards where required — so that your data continues to receive an equivalent level of protection.

We keep personal data only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this policy, and afterwards where retention is justified for legal, accounting, security, fraud-prevention or dispute reasons.

Different categories are kept for different periods: account and profile data for as long as your account exists; listings, messages and reviews for as long as needed to operate the marketplace and handle disputes; payment and promotion records for the period required by tax and accounting law; moderation and enforcement records for as long as needed to keep the platform safe; technical logs for a short period appropriate to security and troubleshooting.

You can ask us to delete your account using the account controls available in your profile or by requesting deletion through the Contact Us page.

After deletion, personal information about you should no longer be publicly associated with your account on BuyThis.ie unless there is a legal justification for keeping it visible. Deletion does not always mean immediate erasure of every record: limited information may be retained where necessary for legal obligations, fraud prevention and security, payment and accounting records, ongoing disputes, or enforcement history.

• access — obtain a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• rectification — correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• erasure — ask us to delete data where the conditions are met
• restriction — ask us to limit how we use your data in certain situations
• objection — object to processing based on our legitimate interests
• portability — receive certain data in a structured, machine-readable format
• withdraw consent — where processing relies on consent
• rights in relation to automated decision-making — where a decision with legal or similarly significant effects is made solely by automated means

These rights are subject to the conditions and exceptions in applicable law. To exercise them, contact us through the Contact Us page. We may need to verify your identity, and we will respond within the time limits set by GDPR.

If you believe your personal data has been handled unlawfully, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission, the supervisory authority for Ireland. You may also complain to the supervisory authority in the EU country where you live or work. We would appreciate the chance to address your concern first through the Contact Us page.

BuyThis.ie is intended for adults. In line with our Terms & Conditions, you must be at least 18 years old to create an account or use the platform. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If we become aware that an account belongs to someone under 18, we may remove the account and any associated listings and content.

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal data, including encrypted connections, authenticated access, database-level access rules that restrict each account to its own data, private storage for uploaded files served through short-lived signed links, and restricted administrative access. No online service can be completely secure, so we cannot guarantee that a breach will never occur. If a breach is likely to result in a high risk to your rights, we will notify you and the relevant authority as required by law.

We use limited automated processing to support the operation of the platform — for example automatic expiry of listings after their advertised period, automated checks and rules that flag suspicious activity or content for review, and payment-status checks returned by our payment processor. These tools assist our decisions; enforcement outcomes such as removing a listing, suspending an account or resolving a report involve human review. We do not make decisions producing legal or similarly significant effects about you by solely automated means.

We may update this policy as BuyThis.ie develops or as legal requirements change. The "last updated" date at the top of this page shows the current version. Where a change is material, we will give reasonable notice — for example by notice in the app, on this page or by email — before it takes effect.

For privacy questions, data-rights requests or complaints, go to Profile → Support & Info → Contact Us. Please include enough detail — such as the account email and any relevant listing links — so we can identify your request and respond quickly. Official operator contact details will be published here once available.