Personal Data Protection
Your information belongs to you
We carefully analyze what types of information we need to provide our services, and we try to limit the information we collect to only what we really need. Where possible, we delete or anonymize this information when we no longer need it. When building and improving our products, our engineers work closely with our privacy and security teams to build with privacy in mind. In all of this work our guiding principle is that your information belongs to you, and we aim to only use your information to your benefit.
We protect your information from others
If a third party requests your personal information, we will refuse to share it unless you give us permission, or we are legally required. When we are legally required to share your personal information, we will tell you in advance, unless we are legally forbidden.
We help sellers and buyers meet their privacy obligations
Many of the sellers and buyers using Liveauctions.jp do not have the benefit of a dedicated privacy team, and it is important to us to help them meet their privacy obligations. To do this, we try to build our products and services so they can easily be used in a privacy-friendly way. We also provide detailed FAQs, documentation, and whitepapers covering the most important privacy topics, and respond to privacy-related questions we receive.
Why we process your information
We generally process your information when we need to do so to fulfill a contractual obligation (for example, to process your purchase payments for items won on the Liveuctions.jp platform), or where we or someone we work with needs to use your personal information for a reason related to their business (for example, to provide you with a service). European law calls these reasons “legitimate interests.” These “legitimate interests” include:
- preventing risk and fraud
- answering questions or providing other types of support
- helping customers find and use apps through our app store
- providing and improving our products and services
- providing reporting and analytics
- testing out features or additional services
- assisting with marketing, advertising, or other communications
We only process personal information for these “legitimate interests” after considering the potential risks to your privacy—for example, by providing clear transparency into our privacy practices, offering you control over your personal information where appropriate, limiting the information we keep, limiting what we do with your information, who we send your information to, how long we keep your information or the technical measures we use to protect your information.
One of the ways in which we are able to help customers using the Liveauctions.jp site and mobile app is by using techniques like “machine learning” (European law refers to this as “automated decision-making”) to help us improve our services. When we use machine learning, we either: still have a human being involved in the process (and so are not fully automated); or use machine learning in ways that don’t have significant privacy implications (for example, reordering how apps might appear when you visit the app store).
Your rights over your information
We believe you should be able to access and control your personal information no matter where you live. Depending on how you use Liveauctions.jp, you may have the right to request access to, correct, amend, delete, port to another service provider, restrict, or object to certain uses of your personal information (for example, direct marketing). We will not charge you more or provide you with a different level of service if you exercise any of these rights.
If you buy something from an auction using the Liveauctions.jp site or mobile app and wish to exercise these rights over information about your purchase, you need to directly contact the liveauctions.jp site management via the contact link in the website and app.
If you are a seller, member, liveauctions.jp employee, website user, or another individual that Liveauctions.jp has a direct relationship with, please submit your data subject request through our online portal. Please note that if you send us a request relating to your personal information, we have to make sure that it is you before we can respond. In order to do so, we may use a third party to collect and verify identification documents.
If you are not happy with our response to a request, you can contact us to resolve the issue. You also have the right to contact your local data protection or privacy authority at any time.
Finally, because there is no common understanding of what a “Do Not Track” signal is supposed to mean, we don’t respond to those signals in any particular way.
Where we send your information
We are a Japanese company, but we work with and process data about individuals across the world. To operate our business, we may send your personal information outside of your state, province, or country, including to the United States. This data may be subject to the laws of the countries where we send it. When we send your information across borders, we take steps to protect your information, and we try to only send your information to countries that have strong data protection laws.
Transfers outside of Europe and Switzerland
When we send your personal information outside of Europe, we do so in accordance with European law.
If you are in Europe, the UK, or Switzerland, when we send your personal information to Japan it is protected under Japanese law, which the European Commission has found will adequately protect your information. If we then send this personal information outside of Japan (for example, when we send this information to system engineers and app developers), this information is protected by contractual commitments.
Finally, while we do what we can to protect your information, we may at times be legally required to disclose your personal information (for example, if we receive a valid court order).
How we protect your information
Our teams work tirelessly to protect your information and ensure the security and integrity of our platform. We also have independent auditors assess the security of our data storage and systems that process financial information. However, we all know that no method of transmission over the Internet, and method of electronic storage, can be 100% secure. This means we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your personal information.
