Privacy & Cookies

Last updated: 16 September 2026. This notice explains what personal data AuctionsNearMe processes, why, and what your rights are. It covers people who visit the site, people who subscribe to alerts or contact us, and the auction houses we list.

Who we are · Visitors · Cookies · Alert subscribers · Contact & removal requests · Listed auction houses · Service providers · Your rights

Who we are

The data controller is Auctify B.V., a company registered in the Netherlands (Chamber of Commerce / KvK 92337139, VAT NL866012965B01). Contact for all privacy matters: info@auctionsnearme.com. Registered office address: available on request via info@auctionsnearme.com.

Visitors of the website

You can use AuctionsNearMe without creating an account and without telling us who you are.

Server logs. Our hosting server (cPanel/Apache, located in the Netherlands) records the IP address, the requested page, the time and the browser identification of every request. These logs are used only to keep the site secure and working, and are rotated automatically by the hosting software.
Consent cookie. One first-party cookie, cookieConsentGiven, remembers whether you accepted or declined analytics. It is essential, contains no identifier, and expires after 30 days.
Analytics (only after you accept). If you click "Accept" in the cookie bar we load Google Tag Manager (container GTM-K75MDTPV) and Google Analytics, which set Google cookies and receive your IP address and the pages you visit. Nothing from Google is loaded if you decline or make no choice. You can change your mind at any time via "Cookie settings" in the footer.
The map. The homepage map is provided by the Google Maps JavaScript API. Showing the map means your browser requests map tiles and script from Google, which receives your IP address and may set cookies of its own. Loading the map is necessary to provide the service you asked for (an auction map). If your browser's location permission is granted, your position is used only in your browser to centre the map; it is not sent to us.
On-device storage. The homepage keeps a few conveniences in your browser only (localStorage keys anm_explored and anm_last_visit, sessionStorage key anm_live_lots_closed). They never leave your device and are not read by us.
Fonts and video. Fonts are served from our own server (no Google Fonts). The introduction video on the About and Get Listed pages is hosted by vadoo.tv and is loaded only after you click to play it; until then no connection to vadoo.tv is made.

Cookies

Name	Set by	Purpose	Duration	Consent
`cookieConsentGiven`	auctionsnearme.com	Remembers your accept/decline choice	30 days	Essential, no consent needed
`_ga`, `_ga_*` and other Google Tag Manager / Analytics cookies	Google	Anonymous usage statistics	Up to 2 years (set by Google)	Only after you click Accept
Google Maps cookies (e.g. `NID`)	Google	Set by Google when the map loads	Set by Google	Needed to show the map you requested

Use "Cookie settings" in the page footer to withdraw or change your choice; the cookie bar then appears again.

Auction alert subscribers

If you subscribe to auction alerts we store your email address, the location, category or region you chose, the page you subscribed on, a one-way hash of your IP address (to limit abuse), the date and time, and the version of the consent text you saw. We use this only to send you the alerts you asked for. Legal basis: your consent. We do not send marketing and we do not share your address. Every alert email carries a one-click unsubscribe link; you can also unsubscribe at /unsubscribe-alerts.php or by emailing us. Unsubscribed records are deleted 30 days after you unsubscribe.

Contact form, claim and removal requests

Contact form. We receive the name, email address and message you type. They are delivered to our mailbox and kept there as long as needed to handle your question. No IP address is recorded with the message.
Listing removal or correction requests. When you ask us to remove or correct a listing we store the domain, the email address you use, a one-way hash of your IP address and the time of the request and of your confirmation. We keep these records for 12 months as evidence that we handled the request. Legal basis: our legal obligation to handle objections and our legitimate interest in evidencing it.

Information for listed auction houses (GDPR article 14)

AuctionsNearMe is a directory of auction houses. Most listed businesses are companies, but some are sole traders whose business name or website contains a personal name. This section is our notice to them.

What we hold: the business name, website address, an auction category, a region-level location (derived from map coordinates), an AI-generated summary and topic keywords. All of it is derived from the auction house's own public website. We do not publish street addresses, telephone numbers or email addresses of listed businesses.
Where it comes from: the auction house's own public website, fetched by our crawler (see /bot/), and, for discovery, the Google Places API, from which only the website address is retained.
Why: to help the public discover auction houses near them. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in running a public directory (GDPR art. 6(1)(f)).
Your choice: you can object at any time and have the listing removed at /remove-listing/. Removal deletes the summary and keywords we generated, and your domain is excluded from future discovery. Our crawler also stops and the listing is removed automatically if your site blocks AuctionsNearMeBot in robots.txt or uses a noindex, noai or tdm-reservation signal.
Accuracy: summaries are produced by AI and can be wrong. Corrections can be requested through the same form.

Service providers and recipients

We use the following providers. Auction-house website text and business names are sent to the AI providers to produce summaries; no visitor data is ever sent to them.

Provider	What for	Data involved
OpenRouter (routing to Google Gemini, OpenAI and Anthropic models)	Generating auction-house summaries and topic summaries	Public website text and names of auction houses
OpenAI	Fallback summary generation	Public website text and names of auction houses
Google (Maps, Tag Manager/Analytics, Places API)	Map display; analytics after consent; discovery of auction-house websites	Visitor IP and pages (map always, analytics after consent); search queries for discovery
OpenCage	Turning place names into map coordinates	Place and region names
Mailgun	Sending email (alerts, confirmations, contact form)	Recipient email address and message
IndexNow (Bing, Yandex and partners)	Telling search engines about new or removed pages on this site	Our own page URLs only
cPanel web hosting (Netherlands, EU)	Running the website and database	All data described on this page

Some of these providers are established in the United States. Where that is the case we rely on the European Commission's adequacy decision for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or on standard contractual clauses offered by the provider.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask us for access to your data, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, portability, and you can object to processing based on legitimate interest. Where processing is based on consent you can withdraw it at any time. Email info@auctionsnearme.com; we answer within one month. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Dutch supervisory authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.

Changes

We update this notice when our processing changes and record the date at the top. Previous versions are available on request.