I was preparing to bid in an upcoming European auction on the Emax platform. I have bid and won with the firm before. But upon my attempt to login Emax brings up my profile page and now won't consider it complete until I give them my birthday and my driver's license number and expiration date. That is information I don't give out lightly. Does Emax have a legitimate need for it? I won't bid with them. I can bid with sixbid or biddr instead.
I've been getting a bunch of emails from them the past week. I guess if that's the info they need I won't be using them. Biddr on the other hand I think is a great platform.
I checked my eMax.bid profile. I used "1234" for my Document Number and "Other" for my Document Type. I used my real birth year. I used January 1st for the birthday which is not my real birthday. The site happily takes my bids with this information. I did recently have to give my real birthday to an Italian auction house that I was dealing with for the first time. They sent me an email asking for my "date and place of birth." This seemed sketchy to me... They wouldn't even send me an invoice until I gave them this. I eventually learned that many legit Italian businesses can't generate an invoice until they have an Italian Tax ID number -- which needs a real birthday and the city (for Italians) or country (for non-Italians). A form like https://www.paginebianche.it/eng/codice-fiscale generates the number. By the way, it was not an ancient coin I was getting from Italy but a historical medal. The tax requirement is not about export but I suspect designed to foil VAT (sales tax) evaders.
It's a legal requirement in one or more European countries. Italian firms, in particular, need this information for regulatory purposes. NAC's Milan office has required this from me in the past.
