2018 Transparency Report: Requests for Kiwis’ data fall

2018 Transparency Report: Requests for Kiwis’ data fall 14.5 per cent

Trade Me has released the sixth edition of its annual Transparency Report today, with the number of requests down 14.5 per cent year-on-year to 1,795 in the year ended 30 June 2018.

The Transparency Report details the requests for Trade Me member data from the New Zealand Police and government agencies. Trade Me’s Head of Policy and Compliance James Ryan said the company has been committed to producing an annual Transparency Report since 2013.

“Publishing this report reinforces our commitment to transparency and gives our customers an insight into how we respond to requests for their data. The recent global attention on data sharing has heightened public awareness around privacy and New Zealand consumers have a right to know how their data is being shared.”

Mr Ryan said that the past twelve months have been a busy time for privacy at Trade Me. “We recently updated our privacy policy, distilling 12 different policies across our various services into one. We also updated our firearms checker to make the sale of firearms on Trade Me safer - we now have the ability to verify firearms licenses entered on Trade Me via the Police National Firearms Database.

“Earlier this year, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner launched the new Privacy Trust Mark to recognise excellence in privacy and we’re proud to be one of the first recipients. The Trust Mark recognises the work we do with our Transparency Report.”

The statistics

The number of requests for Trade Me members’ account data from Police dropped to 1,348 in 2018 (down 13.5 per cent year-on-year). Trade Me also received 447 requests from other government agencies (other than Police), 27 requests from insurance companies and 263 Disputes Tribunal requests.

Of the Police requests, the most information requests were in relation to stolen goods (408), drugs (284) and non-delivery of goods (217).

“This year, 69 per cent of Police requests were made via the Privacy Act, 4 per cent were made under a production order and the remaining 27 per cent did not see any information released.”

Mr Ryan said the Trade Me Trust and Safety team work hard to release only relevant and necessary information.

“We only release information when it’s legally requested of us and we’re satisfied it’s appropriate. If we feel a request is too broad or insufficient, we push back and we did that 22 times last year,” he said.

The full report sets out this data by region, agency and crime classification.

http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1807/Trade_Me_Transparency_Report_2018.pdf
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