Junk mail

[Robert Poste's Child]

Just discovered that the source of some junk mail I've been receiving is Experian. Feel rather shocked to realise that they're exploiting information presumably gathered in relation to your credit rating by selling it to third parties for direct marketing purposes without your knowledge or consent. How is that ethical? Are banks doing this as well?

Sharing this in case anyone else thinks they might be affected. The clothing company that told me this (after I called as repeatedly returning mail had no effect) advises emailing [email protected].

[uncleglen]

That might explain why I never get junk mail as I have never signed up to them

[Robert Poste's Child]

They gather your data anyway - you don't have to sign up with them. My only contact with them was getting a credit report several years ago to check the information they had was correct (it wasn't).

[????]

They all do this and Experian are a massive global company whose main business is really database management the credit rating business was where they started but its s now a fraction of their business, You have touching naivety about this RPC :). In the modern world it's all about data - think you can get off DM lists through some regulator by the way?

[Robert Poste's Child]

So the same organisation has the right to influence your spending on more than one level - preventing you from getting a mortgage, loan or even a job and at the same time identifying areas where they think you could be persuaded to spend more and selling your information to business that might be interested - potentially encouraging debt among people who their records show are vulnerable. Seems highly questionable to me.

ETA that it's not consistent with DP laws, as far as I understand it, to pass on someone's contact details and profile in this way without their prior consent. They may position this from your point of view rather than theirs in an effort to make you buy in, eg 'we would like to send you offers from carefully chosen partners' etc, but the principle is that you have to opt in, or at least not opt out, before they do it.

Basically any business that requires you to set up an account before you can make a purchase seems to be trying to do this. Another one that does it heavy-handedly is the JD Williams group, where even if you tell them as you order that you don't want to receive any marketing you automatically get about 15 pieces before it stops.

Drives me nuts.