When will my identity be mine?

Another visit from the postman, another pile of junk mail. It seems that no matter how hard we try, we will never get rid of the constant intrusions into our lives?

When we turn on the TV or radio we expect the commercial breaks. We purchased these items with the full knowledge that what we want to view is partly funded by adverts and so we can accept this. However when we move into a house and have a phone installed we are the ones paying the rent and/or mortgage. One thing we expect in our own homes is privacy... but that's something we're certainly not getting.

In this on-line world we're all getting more experienced at being careful on the Internet. However no matter how hard we try we still wind up getting piles of spam in our inboxes. The internet is largely unregulated so there isn't that much we can do except refusing to do business with spammers. In the real world, however, businesses are restricted by laws and so one would expect that our personal details can't go very far. Or you would think so!

Over the last few years I've become a little obsessed with those little boxes on application forms. You know the ones... "Tick this box if you do not want us to share your information with other companies". The box always gets ticked, without fail. On line it's a bit harder... one company, Littlewoods, says on it's privacy page (and I'm paraphrasing here) "If you buy something with us on-line we will share your details with other companies, both inside and outside the EU". I've not found an opt-out yet. As you can guess I'm not going to do business with them anytime soon, but the reason I looked at their web site is that I recently got one of their mailings through my letterbox. The letter was addressed to me by name (first initial last name) but was addresses to the wrong gender. It did, however, have the correct address on it. This is very odd because I moved house 6 months ago; clearly I've had to tell people I've moved and so with the banks, telephone companies, satellite TV and such I've done just that. I've also had to inform a few "select" retailers that I deal with too, but in all cases I've always been very clear - do NOT share my address with other companies.

So, how did Littlewoods get my new address so quickly? Well, I've not had any dealings with Littlewoods or any company connected to them in the last few years which leaves only one possible culprit - a month or so before getting this junk mail I returned an Electoral Registration form. I didn't give my local council permission to sell my details, but they regularly ignore things I say to them anyway. They're happy to deprive me of over £1000 a year in council tax and they (grudgingly!) collect my rubbish, but that seems to be about it. Anyway, I've written to both Littlewoods and my council to ask what's happened. We'll see!

As to the telephone... well that's a different matter. I thought I'd got that one cracked a few years ago by registering with the Telephone Preference Service. This organisation is supposed to add your number to a "Do Not Call" list which is checked by companies before calling you. Only problem is, with outsourcing to India (and other countries) that this list holds no legal weight... so they can carry on calling regardless! There is also one additional flaw in that this list does not apply to market research. I was flabegasted to find this out... I have specifically told the marketting community that under no circumstances do I ever want to receive a phone call for any reason whatsoever, but they can still call me if they just want to ask me what I think of them! Guess what my answer is?!

So, what can we do to stay safe? It seems not a lot. I refuse to speak to salesmen who stop me in the street or knock at my door. Anybody who phones gets reported to the TPA. Any time I fill in a form I check the small print to make sure my details can't be shared (and tick the relevant boxes if necessary). Anything I get in the post which has my address on it gets shredded (although this creates intreresting problems from a recycling perspective since my council won't recycle this - they tell us to put junk mail unshredded into a recycling bin!).

But still the junk arrives!

References:
BBC News: Votors' details for sale - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/336978.stm
BBC News: Sale of Electoral Roll challenged - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1528152.stm