Blog - When your personal information is public property
The Leveson Inquiry resumes next week, writes Peter Rhodes, and is determined to expose the terrible wickedness of newspapers hacking into phone accounts.
The Leveson Inquiry resumes next week,
, and is determined to expose the terrible wickedness of newspapers hacking into phone accounts.
And yet while Leveson examines a few hundred cases, the routine buying, selling and simple theft of other people's personal information in Britain goes on millions of times a day.
It ranges from the DVLA cheerfully selling your details to thuggish car-clamp companies to the illegal, but commonplace, supply of personal details by NHS staff and others. How often have you visited a hospital or clinic and later received phone calls from mobility-aid companies or other firms eager to cash in on your ailment?
I wrote recently about one insurance company apparently knowing details of my dealings with another insurer. Now a reader writes: "Some days ago a bond matured and I paid a cheque into the bank. Five days later I was approached by a London-based "wealth management" company. The only people who knew about my cheque were me and the bank. So who told the London company?"
Incidents like this are common and infuriating and we never get to the bottom of them. While it may be fascinating for Leveson to establish how many hacks were listening in to John Prescott's phone messages, I'd really like to know how so many agencies and firms seem to know so much about the rest of us, the ordinary citizens whose private affairs are now regarded as public property.
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I have just switched to BT's Anytime tariff which, if you believe the bumf, says we can make as many landline calls as we like for just £4.90 per month. Mind you, BT are the people who promised me 23Mbs broadband, delivered eight Mbs and never apologised. Search as I may, I cannot find any hidden catches in Anytime. If I do discover one you will, of course, be the second to know.
