Privacy and 192.com

Big Brother Watch has long been concerned about the rapid growth of the database state in the United Kingdom - a craze which threatens data security and invades privacy. 

The latest such manifestation of this phenomenon is the website 192.com. 

While the number '192' conjures up images of the telephone number one used to call in order to find out the mislaid telephone numbers of their friends, 192.com is a whole different kettle of fish.

The website prides itself on its ability to "tell you more about people, businesses & places in the UK than any other directory".  Indeed, aside from finding out telephone numbers, one can also (for a fee) access the individual credit risk reports of company directors, read court judgements and trawl the electoral roll to find people's home addresses.

Do take the time to look at the website and see if your personal information is being made publicly available on this website. 

Rather helpfully, 192.com has produced a guide as to how to have your details removed from the database.  Click here to view it.

By Daniel Hamilton.

Comments

[tim bull]

Thanks for the alert BBW - I found my name linked with my address, age and purchase price of my home.

I have demanded that the information be removed from public view immediately, with the threat of a £ 1,000,000 damages claim.

I really do hope they take it seriously. ;-)

[Purlieu]

How does presenting publicly available information invade privacy ?

[guy]

I think you are muddled about some things.

Commercial databases are *not* the same as the database state, which is government by database. (Taking information from you by force of law, and/or using it to make official judgments on you.)

192.com has been around for a decade. And it had earlier predecessors, including the notorious UKInfodisk on CD-ROM. If you had even bothered to look it up on Wikipedia before committing rant to blog, you would have discovered that. What it does is index publicly available information - some of which, such as the now online Land Register, and digitised electoral registers perhaps might count as the database state.

Commercial database marketing and list vending has been around in sone form since the 1970s. It was described more in a highly developed form by Rapp & Collins in "Maximarketing" in the 1980s. It was one of the first uses of the commercialised internet in the mid-90s. It is not new.

Those of us who worried about those things in the 80s used to make deliberate errors in our names addresses and dates of birth when filling in forms in order to frustrate datamatching. One of the products of the database state is that frustrating datamatching is now treated as, if not called, a criminal activity - 'anti-money laundering' (really tax-reporting), and other ID requirements mean you cannot do it.

The database state is not the same as a commercial information service. But it does massively exacerbate the power of such services.

@tim bull:

They will laugh at you. What personal right do you think you do have (not should have) to constrain such processing and presentation of publicly available information? What legal wrong do you believe has benn done to you, and on what basis do you assess £1,000,000 damages? (If someone uses the information to sell your house from under you - which is not unknown - then the claim would lie against the Land Register.)

[mydataismine]

To guy - just because personal data is available commercially does not mean that the individual has agreed to this or wants it. The problem lies with others having more rights over our personal data than we do ourselves. On one hand we are told to safeguard our data and on the other authorities and organisations are putting it out there so preventing us from protecting our data. A key reason why ID fraud is so prevalent is because our data is out there (often) without our consent. The fraudsters know this and they are having a ball because it is all made so easy for them.

[vervet]

guy - do please chill - fancy commenting seriously on my 'claim' - I even added a winky-face to indicate silliness!

The issue here is not one of publically available information - as a company director I accept that certain info is legally required to be published. The issue is of collating information from independent databases and publishing it in one place. As 'mydataismine' says, it just makes ID theft so much easier.

[vervet]

"Identity theft costs Britain £2.7 billion"

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20101018/tuk-identity-theft-costs-britain-2-7-bil-dba1618.html

[guy]

@vervet:

The problem is publicly available information - and the manner of making it public. The model of open central registers, as with Companies House directors details, is ill- suited to an age of networked computers. It contributes directly to impersonation fraud as you point out, quite without the assistance of such outfits as 192.com. (Perhaps you will be more successful than I have been, in finding any substantiation of that headline £2.7 billion.)

The current legal regime surrounding personal information is badly broken. The official culture even more so. Data protection law mostly addresses the wrong problems in the wrong way - incompletely so in the UK - and is arguably worse than useless.

That isn't helped by hopeless unclarity about the history and nature of the problems as in the OP, or by the facetious assertion of rights that don't exist and that some naive readers may take to mean something.

[WOLF]

Any legal advice on pursuing this against 192.com? By definition are they not acting as a Data Processor under the DPA?

[Rogerbanger]

If your worried about the safety of your children, stalkers, and fraudsters
please sign this petition and forward it to as many people as possible -

http://www.gopetition.com/petition/39936.html

[roger]

Shutdown 192.com petition - please sign and forward.

http://www.gopetition.com/petition/39936.html

[A]

These are no one but thieves. Stealing your private information and trade it into the hands of criminals. I guarantee you that they wouldn’t last long. I am about to launch a campaign against them. Please join me as we all need to gather together. Every individual has the right to have their privacy. Do you want that thieves and criminals to come after your family? Come on guys, it’s the time to wake up. This is a very serious matter that leads into crime.

[A]

We have made our mission to close down their 192.com company and bring them down as existence of their company is breaching others privacy therefore breaching the law especially in a modern society and at this complex age.

They are bunch of hungry armatures that came up with the idea to sell people’s private information to strangers to make few pennies here and there to be able to survive. I have contacted them many times and requested them to remove my details from their database but anytime I called, there were some armatures answering the phone and they claimed that their computers, fax and all their system is shouting down and it’s not working.

We do not believe a word these people say, simply because they are crooks. There are only few handfuls of people in their office who are trying to mess around with people’s life and privacy. We have made a promise to close them down and we want your support.

BBC AND GOVERNMENT ORGANIZETIONS MUST BE AWARE OF THE FACT AND DANGER THAT 192.COM IMPOSES THROUGH OUT OPERATTING THEIR BUSINESS AND THEY MUST STOP THEM IMMEDIATELY.

And, if they don’t, then we raise fund available to crash them down.

ACT TODAY. YOU ARE RESPONSINBLE. SECURE YOUR FAMILY.