Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Effective Date: June 20, 2026
Last Updated: June 20, 2026

FORTUNA AUCTION LLC (“FORTUNA,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) values your privacy and is committed to handling your personal information with care, transparency, and respect for your rights. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect when you interact with us, how we use it, who we share it with, and the rights you have regarding your information.

This Policy applies to our website at fortunaauction.com (and any related subdomains we operate, including our bidding platform at auctions.fortunaauction.com), to our offices, to events we host or attend, and to any other interactions you have with FORTUNA where we may collect personal information.

If you are a resident of California, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or certain other U.S. states, additional rights and disclosures apply to you. Those are described in the corresponding sections below.

1. Who We Are

FORTUNA AUCTION LLC is a specialty auction house based in New York, focused on fine jewelry, luxury watches, designer handbags, and luxury accessories. Our principal business address is on file with our state regulators and is available on request.

You can contact our team at any time with privacy-related questions, concerns, or requests:

For privacy-specific requests (including data access, deletion, correction, or opt-out requests), please use the email above and include “Privacy Request” in the subject line so our team can route it appropriately.

2. Information We Collect

We collect personal information in three general ways: information you provide to us directly, information we collect automatically when you interact with our website or other digital properties, and information we receive from third parties.

2.1 Information You Provide Directly

This is information you knowingly share with us, including:

  • Identifiers and contact information: your name, mailing address, email address, telephone number, and similar contact details.
  • Account and bidder information: username, password (stored in hashed form by our bidding platform provider), and the contents of any account you create or maintain with us.
  • Consignment and transaction information: details about items you submit for valuation or consignment, including photos, descriptions, provenance, prior appraisals, and identifying serial or registration numbers; and details of any transaction you complete with us as a buyer or seller.
  • Financial and payment information: billing address, payment card or bank account details (processed by our payment processors, not stored on our own servers), and tax identification numbers where required for high-value transactions or 1099 reporting.
  • Identity-verification information: government-issued identification (for example, a driver’s license or passport image) where required for high-value transactions, anti-money-laundering screening, or auction-platform compliance.
  • Communications: the content of any email, contact form submission, valuation request, lot inquiry, estate inquiry, SMS, or other message you send us, including any attachments.
  • Marketing preferences: your email subscription preferences and SMS opt-in status, where you have provided those.

2.2 Information We Collect Automatically

When you visit our website, browse our listings, or interact with our communications, we may automatically collect:

  • Device and browser information: your IP address, device type, operating system, browser type and version, language preference, screen resolution, and similar technical details.
  • Usage information: the pages you view, the time and duration of your visits, the links you click, the lots you view or save, the searches you run, the items you add to a cart or watchlist, and similar behavioral information.
  • Referral information: the website or advertisement you came from (referrer URL), and any associated campaign or click identifiers (for example, fbclid from Meta ads or gclid from Google ads).
  • Email-engagement information: whether you opened our emails, which links you clicked, and when, where you have not opted out of such tracking.

We use cookies, pixels, local storage, and similar technologies to collect some of this information. The specific tools we use are listed in Section 4.

2.3 Information We Receive from Third Parties

We may receive personal information about you from:

  • Referrers: when a current client or business partner introduces you to us.
  • Service providers: for example, our payment processors confirming a transaction, our shipping partners confirming a delivery, or identity-verification vendors confirming an ID check.
  • Authorized agents: when a client tells us that you are authorized to bid, receive information, or retrieve property on their behalf.
  • Public sources and market data providers: including auction-results databases, market reports, and publicly available trade publications used for research and valuation.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use personal information for the following purposes:

  • To provide our services: registering you as a bidder, processing consignments and purchases, conducting valuations, scheduling appointments, and providing customer support.
  • To process transactions and send transactional communications: invoicing, payment processing, shipping arrangements, and the operational emails and SMS messages necessary to complete a transaction (for example, bid confirmations, invoices, and shipping notices).
  • To send marketing communications: newsletters, auction announcements, lot previews, market updates, and similar promotional content, where you have opted in or where applicable law permits us to send them subject to your right to opt out.
  • To improve our services: analyzing how visitors use our website and which lots receive interest so we can improve the catalog, the user experience, and our marketing effectiveness.
  • To run advertising: including showing FORTUNA advertisements to relevant audiences on platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and measuring the effectiveness of those advertisements.
  • To comply with legal obligations: including tax reporting, anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer screening, responses to legal process, fraud prevention, and protection of our and others’ rights and safety.
  • To enforce our terms and conditions and protect against fraud, abuse, and security incidents.

We rely on the following legal bases to process personal information of EU/EEA/UK residents, depending on the activity: performance of a contract (for example, to complete a transaction), our legitimate interests (for example, to operate and improve our business), your consent (for example, for marketing emails where required), and compliance with legal obligations.

4. Specific Tools and Services We Use

For transparency, the following are the principal third-party tools we use that may receive your personal information:

  • Google Analytics 4 (provided by Google LLC) — used to measure aggregate website usage, including pages viewed, sessions, sources of traffic, and engagement. Google may use this data in accordance with its own privacy policies.
  • Meta Pixel (provided by Meta Platforms, Inc., for Facebook and Instagram) — used to measure the effectiveness of our advertising and to build audiences for relevant advertising on Meta platforms.
  • Klaviyo (provided by Klaviyo, Inc.) — used to send marketing emails and SMS messages to subscribers and to measure their engagement with those communications.
  • WPForms (provided by WPForms LLC) — used to collect and route website form submissions (valuation requests, contact-us messages, lot inquiries, and estate inquiries).
  • Google Workspace (provided by Google LLC) — used for our internal email, document, and calendar systems.
  • Live bidding platform (operated by a third-party vendor and accessible at auctions.fortunaauction.com) — used to facilitate live and online auction bidding. That platform has its own privacy policy available at https://auctions.fortunaauction.com/privacy-policy.
  • Payment processors and shippers — used to process payments, issue refunds, and arrange delivery.
  • Identity-verification and anti-money-laundering vendors — used where high-value transactions or regulatory requirements call for verification.

You can opt out of Google Analytics by installing Google’s opt-out browser add-on (available at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout) and opt out of Meta advertising by adjusting your settings on Facebook and Instagram or by visiting youradchoices.com.

5. How We Share Your Information

We do not sell your personal information to third parties for money. However, “sale” and “sharing” are defined broadly under some U.S. state privacy laws — including the California Consumer Privacy Act — and our use of advertising tools like Meta Pixel may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” of personal information under those laws. See Section 7 for your right to opt out of this activity.

We share personal information with the following categories of recipients:

  • Service providers and contractors who process information on our behalf — including hosting providers, payment processors, shipping and logistics partners, email and SMS delivery providers, customer-support tools, identity-verification vendors, and our live bidding platform.
  • Advertising and analytics partners including Google and Meta, for the purposes described in Section 4.
  • Professional advisors including our auditors, accountants, lawyers, and insurers, when necessary.
  • Government authorities, law enforcement, and other parties where we are legally required to disclose information (for example, in response to a subpoena, court order, or other lawful process) or where we believe disclosure is necessary to protect our rights or the safety of others.
  • In connection with a business transfer — if FORTUNA is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of business assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to standard confidentiality protections.

We do not share, sell, or rent personal information of any user we know to be under 18.

6. Cookies and Similar Technologies

We use cookies, pixels, local storage, and similar technologies for the following purposes:

  • Strictly necessary cookies that are required to operate the website (for example, to keep you signed in or to remember items in a watchlist).
  • Functional cookies that remember your preferences and improve your experience.
  • Analytics cookies that help us understand how the website is used (Google Analytics).
  • Advertising cookies that help us measure the effectiveness of our advertising and show relevant ads on third-party platforms (Meta Pixel).

You can control cookies through your browser settings, including refusing or deleting cookies. Most browsers also offer a “Do Not Track” signal you can enable; where required by law, we will treat that signal as an opt-out request as described in Section 7.

7. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have specific rights with respect to your personal information. To exercise any of the rights described below, please email info@fortunaauction.com with “Privacy Request” in the subject line. We will respond within the time required by applicable law (generally 30 to 45 days) and may need to verify your identity before fulfilling certain requests.

You also have the right to designate an authorized agent to submit requests on your behalf. Authorized agent requests must include written documentation of the agent’s authority.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.

7.1 California Residents (CCPA and CPRA)

If you are a California resident, you have the following rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act:

  • Right to Know. You can request that we disclose the categories of personal information we collect, the sources from which we collect it, the purposes for which we use it, the categories of third parties with whom we share it, and the specific pieces of personal information we hold about you.
  • Right to Delete. You can request that we delete personal information we have collected from you, subject to certain exceptions (for example, where we need the information to complete a transaction, to comply with a legal obligation, or for internal uses reasonably aligned with your expectations).
  • Right to Correct. You can request that we correct inaccurate personal information we hold about you.
  • Right to Opt Out of Sale or Sharing. You can opt out of any “sale” or “sharing” of your personal information, including our use of Meta Pixel for cross-context behavioral advertising. To exercise this right, please email info@fortunaauction.com with “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” in the subject line. We also honor Global Privacy Control (GPC) signals where your browser sends them.
  • Right to Limit Use of Sensitive Personal Information. Where we collect sensitive personal information (such as government-issued ID for transaction compliance), you have the right to limit our use of it to what is necessary to provide the service you requested.
  • Right to Non-Discrimination. We will not deny you services, charge you different prices, or provide you a different level of service because you exercised your privacy rights.

A description of the categories of personal information we collect, the purposes for which it is used, and the categories of third parties with whom we share it appears throughout Sections 2 through 5 of this Policy.

7.2 Residents of Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, and Other U.S. States

If you reside in a U.S. state with a comprehensive consumer privacy law (including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, and similar states with comparable laws), you have rights that may include access, deletion, correction, portability, the right to opt out of targeted advertising, and the right to opt out of certain profiling. Use the contact details in Section 1 to exercise these rights.

7.3 Residents of the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland

If you are located in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, you have rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK GDPR, or the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection, including:

  • The right of access to your personal data and information about how we process it.
  • The right of rectification of inaccurate or incomplete personal data.
  • The right of erasure (“right to be forgotten”) in certain circumstances.
  • The right to restrict processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.
  • The right of data portability for data you have provided to us.
  • The right to object to certain processing, including processing based on our legitimate interests and processing for direct marketing.
  • The right to withdraw consent at any time where we rely on consent as the basis for processing.
  • The right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

Our legal bases for processing are summarized at the end of Section 3.

Because we are based in the United States, your personal data will be transferred to and processed in the United States and other countries that may not provide the same level of data protection as your home jurisdiction. We rely on appropriate safeguards (including service-provider contractual commitments and, where applicable, standard contractual clauses) for these transfers.

8. Data Retention

We retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it, including any legal, accounting, tax, regulatory, dispute-resolution, or contract-enforcement purpose. In practice, this generally means:

  • Account and bidder records for the lifetime of your account plus a reasonable additional period (typically seven years) for tax, audit, and regulatory purposes.
  • Transaction records for at least seven years following the transaction, as required for tax and financial reporting.
  • Identity-verification records for the period required by applicable anti-money-laundering rules.
  • Marketing-list records until you unsubscribe or until inactivity for an extended period, whichever comes first.
  • Website analytics data in the form retained by our analytics providers under their own retention settings.
  • Communications including contact-form submissions and emails, for as long as needed to address the matter and for our business records.

Where we no longer have a need to retain personal information, we securely delete or anonymize it.

9. Security

We use a combination of technical, organizational, and procedural safeguards designed to protect your personal information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. These include encryption of data in transit, access controls, security training for staff who handle personal information, and regular review of our service providers’ security practices.

No security system is perfect, and we cannot guarantee the security of any information transmitted to us or stored by us. You are responsible for safeguarding your own account credentials. If we have reason to believe that the security of your personal information has been compromised in a way that may cause harm, we will notify you as required by applicable law.

10. Children’s Privacy

FORTUNA’s services are intended for adults only. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 years of age. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a minor without verified parental consent, we will delete that information promptly. If you believe we may have collected information from a minor, please contact us using the information in Section 1.

11. International Visitors

Our website and services are operated from the United States. If you visit our website from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States and that the data-protection laws of the United States may differ from those of your home country. See Section 7.3 for additional disclosures applicable to EEA, UK, and Swiss residents.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, our service providers, or applicable law. When we do, we will update the “Last Updated” date at the top of this page. Material changes will be communicated more prominently, including (where appropriate) by email or notice on our website. We encourage you to review this Policy periodically.

13. Contact Us

If you have questions, concerns, complaints, or requests relating to this Policy or to your personal information, please contact us at:

  • Email: info@fortunaauction.com (please put “Privacy Request” or “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” in the subject line for those specific requests)
  • Phone: (212) 389-9040
  • Mail: FORTUNA AUCTION LLC, attention: Privacy, 2255 Memorial Blvd, Ste 10231, Murfreesboro, TN 37129
  • Web: https://fortunaauction.com/contact/

For Live Bidding Platform privacy questions, please also see the platform’s own privacy policy at https://auctions.fortunaauction.com/privacy-policy.

14. Mobile Messaging (SMS)

If you opt in to receive text messages from FORTUNA (including messages sent by our executive assistant, Chloe), the following applies. We send service and transaction text messages related to your consignment, such as item-received confirmations, consignment status updates, and shipping and scheduling coordination; this is a transactional, customer-care program and not a marketing program. Message frequency varies based on your consignment activity, and message and data rates may apply. You can opt out at any time by replying STOP, and reply HELP for help. We do not share, sell, or rent mobile phone numbers or SMS opt-in/consent information with third parties or affiliates for their own marketing or promotional purposes. Mobile numbers collected for SMS are used only to send the messages you have requested and are shared only with our SMS delivery provider (Twilio) as needed to deliver them. For full details, see our SMS Terms.