Your privacy on Streetwise
You can use every Streetwise tool and article without signing up. We collect as little as we can, we never sell personal information, and this page lists everything we and the services we use do collect.
Numbers you type into our calculators are worked out in your browser. They are not sent to us.
Google shows ads here and may use cookies to do it. You can turn personalised ads off at any time.
Who we are
Streetwise (www.streetwise.org.nz) is a New Zealand website. In this policy "we" and "us" mean Streetwise. We follow the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 and its Information Privacy Principles. Our privacy officer can be reached at [email protected].
What we collect, and why
| When you | What we keep | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Use a tool or read an article | Nothing that identifies you. Our host keeps short-lived technical logs (such as IP address and browser type) to keep the site secure and working. | To run the site and stop attacks. |
| Check a power bill with the power price checker | Nothing. If you upload a bill, it is read inside your own browser. It is never sent to us or anyone else, and it is gone when you close the page. | So you can see how your power price compares, without handing over your bill. |
| Work out a commute with the commute cost calculator | Nothing. It works inside your own browser and nothing you type is sent to us or anyone else. | So you can compare petrol, EV and bus for your own trip, privately. |
| Join the weekly briefing | Your email address, and whether you open or click our emails. | To send the newsletter you asked for. Every email has an unsubscribe link. |
| Email us | Your email address and what you wrote. | To reply to you and fix anything you report. |
| Vote in a reader poll | Your answer, plus a one-way scrambled code made from your connection and browser. We do not keep your IP address. | So the same person cannot vote twice. |
| Type an answer in the Interview Room | Nothing. Your answer is sent to our AI provider to write the practice reply, then dropped. We only keep a daily count against a code that changes every day. | To give you feedback, and to stop the tool being overused. |
| Report a price on Price Watch | The item, store, region, price and date. Nothing about you. | To show shoppers current prices. |
| Book an ad | Your business name, email, ad image, web link and booking dates. Card details go straight to Stripe; we never see them. | To run your booking, invoice it and contact you about it. |
We do not knowingly collect information from children under 16. Our site is written for adults.
Advertising and cookies
We use Google AdSense to show ads. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your earlier visits to this website and other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies lets it and its partners show you ads based on your visits to our site and other sites on the internet.
- You can turn off personalised advertising in Google's Ads Settings.
- You can also opt out of some other vendors' personalised ads at aboutads.info or youronlinechoices.eu.
- Read how Google uses information from sites that use its services.
Google may let other certified ad companies bid to show ads on our pages. You can see the list of these companies in Google's ad technology providers list, and opt out of their personalised ads through the links above.
Visitors in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland are asked for consent before personalised ads or cookies are used, through Google's certified consent message. If you say no, you may still see ads that are not personalised. You can change your choice any time on our cookie page.
Our cookie policy lists every cookie and similar file used on this site.
Services we use
These companies handle some information for us. Some are outside New Zealand, mainly in the United States. We only use providers that protect information to a standard comparable to New Zealand law.
| Service | What it does for us |
|---|---|
| Ads (AdSense), the consent message, web fonts and site search statistics (Search Console). | |
| Cloudflare | Hosts the website, protects it from attacks and may count visits with its cookie-free analytics. |
| MailerLite | Sends the weekly briefing. |
| Stripe | Takes payment for ad bookings and for support payments. |
| Anthropic | Writes the practice replies in the Interview Room. Text sent to it is not used to train its models. |
| Meta (Facebook) | Our Facebook page. We do not put Facebook tracking code on this site; Meta's policy applies when you visit Facebook. |
How long we keep it
- Newsletter: until you unsubscribe.
- Emails to us: up to two years, unless we need them longer to deal with a complaint or correction.
- Ad bookings and payments: seven years, because New Zealand tax law requires it.
- Poll votes and price reports: kept as counts, with no personal information.
Your rights
Under the Privacy Act 2020 you can ask to see the personal information we hold about you and ask us to correct it. You can also ask us to delete it. Email [email protected] and we will reply within 20 working days. It is free.
If you live in the European Economic Area or the UK you also have rights under the GDPR, including to object to processing, to move your data, and to withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect anything done before.
If you are not happy with how we handle your request, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, or your local data protection authority if you live overseas.
Keeping it safe
The site runs over a secure (HTTPS) connection. We limit who can reach the information we keep, and if a privacy breach is likely to cause serious harm we will tell the people affected and the Privacy Commissioner, as the law requires.
Links to other websites
Our guides and tools link to official and other websites. Their own privacy policies apply once you leave our site.
Changes to this policy
If we change how we use personal information, we will update this page and the date below.
Last reviewed 16 October 2026.