Privacy

In a day when the UK government has announced a very serious breach of privacy for half the UK population with names, bank account and national insurance details simply "lost" on a CD it should act as a reminder to each and every one of us to take care of our privacy on-line, and that includes freecycling groups. As of today I would like to institute a policy that any personal details, other than name, general location and email address will be removed from all posts by your owner-moderator team. If the details cannot be removed then the post will be deleted. In all cases the originator will be informed and asked to repost as necessary, without any personal data. By personal data we mean details about your family, your home, including telephone number and actual address. Of course for you to actively freecycle you needs must tell someone where you live. That is generally not a problem since it is a communication such as one you would do if you sold an item in a newspaper. You are only telling one individual in this instance, rather than the group. We will continue to look at this issue and if we find other ways of helping members maintain privacy then we will discuss, inform and amend our guidelines and processes.