The battle to safeguard your data
Our email inboxes are full of spam and our phones are plagued by nuisance calls – all because information is being traded on a huge scale without people’s knowledge and without appropriate checks in place.
Research by Which? has discovered that would–be scammers can get hold of our sensitive and financial information from “data brokers” by paying as little as four pence per record.
We investigated 14 companies which sell on people’s personal data. We pretended to be a dodgy firm which wanted to contact people about cashing in their pensions early – an all too common scam – and we uncovered numerous examples of irresponsible behaviour.
One company was happy to offer us 500,000 pieces of information about people earning £40,000 and above for just four pence per item; another firm offered us the names and telephone numbers of 2,200 people with an income of over £35,000 for 66p per item.
Yet another firm told us they would be willing to sell us the bank details of 5,000 people at a cost of 24p per item, and one company sent us a sample telephone list on which 13 out of 18 people were on a register stating they didn’t want marketing calls.
All in all, our researchers were able to order information from ten of the 14 data broking firms contacted – though we obviously stopped short of buying the actual data.
And all of this without these companies checking on us. If they had carried out any due diligence they’d have discovered our fake business wasn’t listed at Companies House or registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, and wasn’t FCA regulated – all of which it should have been to legally trade in personal data and investment advice.
Thankfully, four firms demonstrated what we believe to be best practice by refusing to deal with our fake pensions company from the outset. But the other ten just weren’t good enough.
We have now presented our findings to the ICO, which agreed they were ‘concerning’ and raised ‘serious issues’ about compliance with data protection law. The ICO will now be considering if enforcement action is required.
Which? is doing the utmost to ensure your personal details remain private and would–be scammers go empty– handed.
But you can help yourself too – avoid ending up on a data list which could be sold on to scammers by never giving permission for your information to be shared by third parties. And if you answer online surveys, double check what exactly they’ll do with your details.