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Acceptable Use Policy

Last Updated: 25 August 2026 Effective Date: 2 February 2026

Operating Entity​

RetroTechCollector is a service operated by RetroTechCollection.

Operating Entity: RetroTechCollection Service Name: RetroTechCollector Operating Entity Website: https://retrotechcollection.com Service URL: https://retrotechcollector.app

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") explains what you can and cannot do on RetroTechCollector. It supplements our Terms of Service and applies to everyone who uses the service. In this policy, "we", "us", and "our" refer to RetroTechCollection, the operating company.

Breaking this policy can cost you your content, your access to the marketplace, or your account.

Purpose of This Policy​

RetroTechCollector is a community for retro technology collectors. This policy exists to keep it usable: to protect people from harm and harassment, to keep the marketplace honest, to meet our legal obligations, and to keep the platform working.

General Principles​

Be honest. Do not misrepresent yourself or your items. Describe what you are actually selling. Do not manipulate ratings, offers or market data.

Be respectful. There is a person on the other side of every message and every transaction. Disagree without being abusive.

Be legal. Follow UK law, and the law where you are. Respect other people's intellectual property.

Be careful. Protect your own account. Do not try to reach anyone else's. If you find a security flaw, report it rather than exploit it.

Where This Policy Applies​

Everywhere you can publish or send something. That means: marketplace listings and their photos, videos and attached documents; the questions and answers on a listing; wanted ads on the ISO board; your seller storefront; social posts and comments; hashtags; your profile, username and bio; direct messages; ratings and reviews; and item descriptions in your collection where they are visible to others.

Some of these are public and visible to people who are not signed in. Wanted ads, seller storefronts, listings, listing questions and public profiles can all be read by guests and indexed by search engines. Write them accordingly.

Prohibited Content​

You may not post, upload, send or list:

Illegal content​

  • Child sexual abuse material. Zero tolerance, reported to the authorities.
  • Content promoting terrorism or violent extremism
  • Instructions for making weapons or explosives
  • Anything unlawful under UK law, including content caught by the Online Safety Act 2023
  • Content that infringes copyright, trademarks or other intellectual property rights
  • Stolen goods, or anything you have no legal right to sell

Harmful content​

  • Credible threats of violence against people or groups
  • Content promoting self-harm or suicide
  • Graphic violence or gore
  • Intimate images shared without consent
  • Any content that sexualises minors

Hateful content​

  • Hate speech targeting race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation or any other protected characteristic
  • Slurs and derogatory terms
  • Holocaust denial or the glorification of atrocities
  • Content promoting discrimination

Harassment and bullying​

  • Targeted harassment of an individual
  • Doxxing: publishing someone's private information without consent
  • Encouraging others to pile on
  • Sexual harassment or unwanted sexual advances
  • Impersonating someone in order to harm them

Spam and manipulation​

  • Unsolicited commercial messages, in DMs or anywhere else
  • Pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing
  • Phishing
  • Fake reviews, fake ratings, or reviews traded between accounts
  • Deliberately entering false data to distort market value statistics
  • Bid manipulation, including bidding on your own auctions through another account
  • Posting wanted ads or listing questions you have no genuine interest in, to promote something else

Misleading content​

  • Scam listings
  • Counterfeits presented as genuine
  • Fabricated documentation, provenance or certificates of authenticity
  • Misrepresenting an item's condition or completeness
  • Any false statement intended to deceive

Note on AI assistance: the app can suggest what an item is, suggest a condition grade and draft a description for you. Those are suggestions. What you publish is your statement to the buyer, not ours. Accepting a wrong suggestion without checking it is still a misdescription, and it is still your responsibility. See AI Features and the EU AI Act.

Adult content​

Pornography, sexually explicit material and sexual services are not permitted. This is a platform for retro technology.

Period-appropriate content inside genuine vintage media (a magazine, a game's packaging) may be acceptable where it is clearly disclosed and genuinely part of the collectible. It must not be the point of the listing, and it must not appear in listing photographs.

Prohibited Behaviour​

Do not abuse the platform​

  • Do not create additional accounts to evade a ban or restriction
  • Do not run bots or automated tools against the service. If you want programmatic access, use the Developer API, which is what it is for
  • Do not scrape the site
  • Do not attempt to reverse engineer our systems
  • Do not exploit a bug or vulnerability. Report it to [email protected] and we will treat you as having done the right thing
  • Do not work around a restriction we have placed on your account

Do not abuse other people​

  • Do not harass anyone through messages, questions, comments or reviews
  • Do not send unsolicited bulk messages
  • Do not create listings you have no intention of honouring
  • Do not file dispute claims you know to be false
  • Do not leave retaliatory or fabricated reviews
  • Do not defraud a buyer or a seller

Do not interfere with the service​

  • No denial-of-service attacks or deliberate overloading
  • No malware
  • No attempts to access accounts, data or systems you are not entitled to
  • Do not circumvent security controls

Do not break the marketplace rules​

  • Do not list prohibited items
  • Do not manipulate prices with fake bids or fake offers
  • Do not fail to ship after being paid
  • Do not fail to pay after an offer you made is accepted
  • Do not shill bid on your own items

On taking deals off-platform: selling costs 0% on every plan at the moment, so there is nothing to dodge today. The rule still stands. The platform's protections (held payments, the dispute process, the record of what was agreed) only exist for transactions completed here. Move a deal into a private arrangement and you give up all of them, for both sides.

Prohibited Items​

Beyond anything unlawful, you may not list:

Goods you cannot lawfully sell​

  • Stolen items, or items obtained by fraud
  • Anything you do not own
  • Anything you do not physically have in your possession
  • Pre-orders you cannot fulfil

Regulated items​

  • Firearms, ammunition and weapon accessories
  • Explosives and hazardous materials
  • Prescription drugs and controlled substances
  • Tobacco
  • Alcohol, without the appropriate licence

High-risk items​

  • Recalled products
  • Replicas and reproductions presented as originals. Reproductions are fine when they are clearly and prominently described as reproductions
  • Items with removed or altered serial numbers, unless the removal is lawful and disclosed
  • Lock-picking tools, where prohibited in your jurisdiction
  • Government uniforms and credentials

Not what this marketplace is for​

  • Digital goods and other intangibles
  • Services
  • Tickets and event access
  • Living things
  • Human remains

Items that would breach a third party's terms​

  • Game accounts and in-game items
  • Consoles or devices supplied loaded with pirated software
  • Devices whose purpose is to circumvent copy protection
  • Software licences that are not transferable

Rules for Specific Features​

Listings​

  • Describe the item accurately and grade its condition honestly
  • Use photographs of the actual item. Stock or reference images must be labelled as such
  • Disclose every defect, fault and missing part
  • State where you are shipping from
  • Video and document attachments must relate to the item: a proof-of-function clip, a manual, a schematic, a receipt. Do not use them to advertise something else or to route people off-platform

Multiple units and options. A listing can hold more than one unit, and a seller can define their own option axes, each combination with its own price, its own stock and its own photographs. Every unit and every combination must match what is described. If the options differ in condition or completeness, say so on the combination, not just in the general description. Do not use the cheapest combination to make a listing look cheaper than anything you are actually willing to sell.

Listing questions and answers​

Questions and answers on a listing are public. Answer honestly, and answer the question. Do not use the thread to advertise, to abuse the asker, or to take the conversation off-platform. Do not post a question in order to disparage a competing listing.

Sellers can hide a question on their own listing. That is for spam and abuse, not for burying a fair question you would rather not answer.

Wanted ads​

Post what you are genuinely looking for. Do not use a wanted ad as an advertisement, do not post the same ad repeatedly, and do not use responses to spam people with unrelated stock.

Messaging​

  • No unsolicited bulk messages
  • Keep it relevant to the transaction or the collection
  • No phishing links, no malware
  • No harassment

Be aware of what messaging is. Messages are encrypted at rest with a key we hold. That is not end-to-end encryption, and we do not describe it as such: when a message is reported to us, our moderators can and do read it in order to act on the report. That is how message moderation works. Do not send anything you would not want a moderator to see, and understand that "it was a private message" is not a defence against this policy.

In-person collection and meetups​

Where a listing offers local pickup or a meetup, arrange it sensibly: a public place, in daylight, and tell someone where you are going. Inspect the item before money changes hands. We are not present at a meetup and cannot mediate what happens at one, and payments made in person sit outside the platform's protections entirely.

Ratings and reviews​

  • Base them on an actual transaction
  • Do not review yourself, and do not trade reviews
  • Do not offer or accept anything in exchange for a review
  • Be honest, and be civil about it

Collection data and the catalogue​

  • Do not enter false data to move market value statistics
  • Do not copy descriptions from elsewhere without attribution
  • Only upload images you have the right to upload

Social and profiles​

  • Respect other people's privacy settings
  • Do not follow or add people purely to message them
  • Do not repost someone else's private collection without their permission
  • Usernames, display names and bios are covered by this policy like anything else

Age-Restricted Items​

Some genuine retro media carries age ratings, and some vintage publications are adult in nature.

If you list something age-restricted:

  • Say so clearly, in the title and the description
  • Do not use sexually explicit images in listing photographs
  • Sell only to buyers who meet the age requirement
  • Make sure it is lawful both where you are and where the buyer is

We will remove listings that are not properly disclosed, or that are adult material dressed up as a collectible.

Reporting​

If someone is in danger​

  • Child safety: report to CEOP at ceop.police.uk immediately
  • A credible threat of violence: contact the police
  • Then tell us: [email protected]

Everything else​

Use the report control on the content itself. It is available on social posts, comments, user profiles, marketplace listings, listing questions and individual messages. There is also a "report a problem" route on a transaction, for when something has gone wrong with a specific order.

Or email [email protected] with the URL, the username, what happened and any screenshots.

When you report, you choose a reason (spam, harassment, inappropriate content, scam, phishing, threats, hate speech, illegal content, violence, misinformation, copyright, or other) and you can add a description. Choosing an accurate reason genuinely helps; it determines how quickly the report is looked at.

What happens next​

Your report goes into a moderation queue that our team works through. We review it, decide whether the policy has been broken, and act. If we act on content, its author is notified and told why.

We do not tell the person you reported who reported them.

Do not abuse the reporting system. Repeatedly filing reports you know to be baseless is itself a breach of this policy. Reporting something in good faith that turns out to be fine is not. If you are unsure, report it.

Enforcement​

What we do depends on what happened and what has happened before. The measures available to us are, roughly in order of severity:

  • Dismiss: we look at it and find no breach
  • Warn: the content stays up, and its author receives a notification explaining the problem
  • Content warning: the content stays up behind a warning label
  • Remove: the content is deleted
  • Restrict reach: an account's public content is suppressed without the account being closed
  • Restrict the account: losing access to specific features, such as listing or messaging
  • Suspend: access is withdrawn for a set period
  • Ban: access is withdrawn, either for a fixed period or permanently

Anything more serious than dismissing a report requires the moderator to record a written reason. That reason is what goes into the notification to the author, and into our audit log.

Immediate and permanent​

Some things do not get a warning:

  • Child sexual abuse material
  • Credible threats of violence
  • Doxxing intended to cause harm
  • Fraud and theft
  • Repeating a serious breach after being told to stop

Appeals​

If you think we got it wrong, email [email protected] within 14 days. Tell us what was decided, why you think it was wrong, and include anything that supports that. A different person to the one who made the original decision will review it, and we will reply.

Appealing does not pause the decision while it is considered.

Other Consequences​

Beyond your account, a breach may mean:

  • Money: pending marketplace earnings withheld while we investigate; no refund of a subscription
  • Legal: a report to law enforcement where something illegal has happened, cooperation with investigations, and civil action where we have suffered loss
  • Reputation: the ratings and reviews left by the people you dealt with are theirs, and we do not remove them because you would rather they were not there

Context Matters​

We are not looking to catch people out.

Historical and educational material. Wartime and other difficult historical items can be discussed and sold responsibly, in a collecting context. The context has to be real.

Satire and parody. Generally fine when it is obviously that. It cannot be used as cover for hate speech.

Period content in genuine artefacts. Vintage software, artwork and packaging sometimes contain things that would not be acceptable if posted on their own. Being part of a genuine collectible is the difference.

Different jurisdictions. We apply UK law as our baseline. If something is lawful here but not where you are, you are still bound by your own law. We may restrict some content geographically.

If you are unsure whether something is allowed, ask before you post it: [email protected]

Our Position and Our Limits​

We reserve the right to remove content, restrict features, suspend or terminate accounts, decline service, and to use judgement about how a rule applies to a specific situation.

We are honest about the limits. We do not read everything. Most of what we act on, we act on because somebody reported it. We may not act on every report, and we will not always agree with you about what a rule means.

As a service that hosts content created by its users, we are not the author of that content and are not treated in law as though we were. That protection is not unconditional: it depends on us acting once we know about a problem. That is why the reporting routes above matter. Our duties under the Online Safety Act 2023 sit alongside it, not instead of it.

Changes to This Policy​

We update this policy to deal with new kinds of abuse, to reflect changes in the law, and to make existing rules clearer. When we make a significant change we will update the "Last Updated" date and tell active users. Continuing to use the service means accepting the current version.

Contact​

Report a breach: [email protected] Appeal a decision: [email protected] Report a security flaw: [email protected] Ask a question: [email protected] General support: [email protected]

Most people never come near this policy. Describe things honestly, treat people decently, and you will not have to think about it again.

Last reviewed: 25 August 2026