Privacy Policy

Who is responsible

Hooves is operated by Estaron LLC (“Hooves”, “we”, “us” or “our”), which is responsible for the personal information described in this policy. Our postal address is 11A/110 Don McKinnon Drive, Albany, Auckland 0632. Email support@hooves.co.nz with privacy questions or requests to access or correct your information. Our privacy officer can be reached at the same address.

Information we collect

Clerk, our sign-in provider, handles the account details you provide when you sign in, and information shared by Google if you choose Google sign-in. We use your sign-in identifier to recognise your account and may suggest your first name as your public display name.

We collect the profile details, listings, descriptions, photos, prices, locations, contact settings, messages, auction bids, tender offers and saved listings you submit. Auction bid histories show bidders as numbered labels such as Bidder 2. Your maximum bid stays private to you and our moderators, and the seller learns the winner’s public name so you can arrange the sale. A tender offer stays private to you and our moderators until the tender closes. The seller then sees every offer with each bidder’s public name.

We also keep farm and business memberships and invitations, reports, blocks, message read status, email preferences, seller-status declarations and their changes, and moderation records. Our service providers process technical information such as IP addresses, browser or device details and request logs to deliver and secure the service.

Draft farm and business invitations

An authorised Hooves administrator may prepare a private draft farm or business profile using information provided to us or publicly available details. The draft can include a proposed cover image or logo. The administrator nominates an email address for the profile’s representative to review it. The draft is not a public profile.

Anyone with its private review link can view the proposed public details and image without signing in. Approving it or requesting changes requires sign-in with a matching verified email address. The review preview does not disclose the invitation email or private feedback.

We publish it only after the representative confirms authority to act for the farm or business and approves the proposed public details; they then own the profile. A proposed image still needs a moderator’s approval before it is public. We keep the approval record with the profile, including the invitation email until the approving account is deleted. A recipient can request changes before approval or contact us for correction or removal. The invitation email is not automatically added to public contact details.

Why we use it

We use this information to sign you in, display and search listings, let people communicate, remember saved listings and location or contact defaults, send message and listing reminder emails according to your notification settings, provide support, feature published listings and approved photos when promoting Hooves, and address abuse, safety concerns and legal obligations. You can browse published listings without an account. An account is required to post, save listings or send messages; posting and messaging are for people aged 16 or older. Posting requires listing details and a New Zealand region, district and postcode so people can understand the offer and its general location. Saving a default address or postcode is optional, as are listing phone numbers, emails and exact pickup details.

Public listings and profiles

Anyone can see published listing details and approved photos, the seller profile, the name of the member who listed it, and the listing’s region, district and postcode. Farm and business pages also show the public description, approved cover or logo, links, service area and public contact details their owners choose to publish. Sellers choose whether a listing’s phone number and email are shown to everyone, to signed-in members only or to nobody. Your sign-in email is not automatically published. Public information can be indexed by search engines or copied by others. Share only information and photos you are entitled to publish.

Private locations and shared profiles

Saved default addresses and postcodes are separate from public profile contact details. They prefill new listings, and your personal default location can prefill search. Saving a private address does not publish it. Exact pickup details are not shown to buyers; sellers can share them directly when arranging collection. For a farm or business, current members can read and update its private defaults and manage its listings. Its shared inbox is available to current members, including members who join later; replies show the member who answered. Removing a member ends their access, but cannot undo copies they already made.

Messages, photos and safety

Messages are available to the buyer and the seller, including current members of the selling farm or business. We may access relevant information for support, moderation, safety or legal reasons. Unpublished listings and pending photos are not public; authorised sellers and moderators can access them for management or review. The upload process resizes photos and removes embedded camera metadata such as GPS, time and camera model. It does not remove information visible in the picture, such as a sign, address or face. Approval is not a guarantee of a listing’s accuracy or safety.

Service providers and support email

Clerk handles sign-in using infrastructure in the United States. Cloudflare hosts the site and API on its global network, stores photos, covers and logos, and sends automated Hooves emails. Supabase hosts the marketplace database in Sydney, Australia. The Sydney database location does not limit all service processing to Australia: providers and their subprocessors may process support requests, logs and other service information in other countries.

Zoho Mail hosts our support mailbox in Australia. Older support emails are kept in a Gmail inbox provided by Google, which also receives moderator alerts. Some support emails may still reach that inbox through our previous Cloudflare forwarding route.

Message and listing reminder emails are enabled by default. You can turn each category off separately in Your account. To deliver these emails when enabled, Hooves retrieves your verified primary email from Clerk; it does not copy that sign-in email into your profile or listings. Message emails contain an inbox link, not message text; a listing reminder names the listing and when it closes. In Your account, you can separately turn off emails about messages to listings you manage, emails about replies to conversations you started, and reminders a week before a listing you manage closes. We send listing reminders to the person who posted it when they are eligible to receive them. Otherwise, eligible farm or business owners receive them, using each person’s own email preference.

These providers may process or store information outside New Zealand. We may also disclose information where permitted or required by law, including to address serious safety concerns.

Browser storage and analytics

Sign-in uses browser storage and cookies to maintain your session. Hooves also stores unfinished listing details and your analytics choice on this browser.

Your draft on this browser does not include photo files or details entered in the separate pickup address and contact fields. Anything you type in the title or description can still be saved. Browser drafts are separated by signed-in account and expire after 30 days without edits, checked when you next open a signed-in listing form. Signing out or deleting your account clears that account’s drafts on this browser; Start over clears the animal draft. Locally stored details may still be accessible to someone with access to this device. Clearing Hooves site data removes local drafts and preferences and signs you out.

Cloudflare processes request and performance information separately from the optional Google Analytics choice.

Optional Google Analytics

If you choose Allow analytics, Google Analytics 4 measures page visits and how search, posting and enquiries work, using cookies and browser, device and approximate regional information, which may be processed outside New Zealand. We send general route names, a fixed page title and limited categories such as marketplace kind, sale format, posting step, coarse result counts, acknowledged draft, pending or published outcomes, and failure categories. Browser acknowledgements do not establish that a sale was completed. We exclude account identities, messages, search text, invite tokens, listing, farm and business identifiers, private addresses and amounts. Advertising features and automatic content tracking are disabled. No Google Analytics tag loads before your choice; an earlier page-visit-only Allow choice does not enable the expanded scope. You can change your choice at any time in Analytics preferences; No thanks stops our Google Analytics collection and clears this site’s Google Analytics cookies on this browser. It does not delete information already sent to Google or change essential sign-in and service processing.

Storage, retention and deletion

We use access controls and other reasonable safeguards. Information is kept for operating accounts and listings, communication, safety, dispute handling and legal obligations. Closing or expiring a listing removes it from public discovery; it does not erase its stored details or conversations.

Account deletion removes personal listings, their photos and conversations, personal defaults and saves, and replaces your messages elsewhere with a removal notice. Farm and business data stays with the shared profile. A disabled account and sign-in identifier, and limited report, moderation and conversation records, remain for safety and other participants. See Delete account for the full process.

Deletion clears your saved drafts on the browser where you delete the account. Other devices may retain local drafts until cleared or their expiry is checked. Deletion does not erase copies others made or immediately erase all provider logs or backup copies. Contact us about personal information remaining in shared records.

Your choices and rights

You can edit your profile, private defaults and notification preferences in Your account, and manage shared profile details according to your role. Email support@hooves.co.nz to request access to or correction of personal information, or help with deletion. We may need to verify your identity; do not send a password or sign-in code. You can delete your account from Your account while signed in. If we cannot resolve a privacy concern, you may complain to the New Zealand Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

Account, safety and conversation emails are part of the service. Hooves sends marketing emails, such as listing suggestions, offers for sellers, news and tips, partner offers and research invitations, only if you turn each one on, at your first sign-in or in Your account. You can turn each off there at any time. We record each choice, when you made it, whether on the sign-in card or in Your account, and the wording you saw. Hooves sends partner offers itself and does not give partners your email address.

Changes

We may update this policy as Hooves changes. The effective date will change when we do. If a change materially affects how we use existing information, we will take appropriate steps to notify affected users.