More personal details for sale by councils

Posted in 'Electoral Roll' by Barry Stamp

11 January 2012

Analysis of the 2011 Electoral Registers by Equifax reveals a 5% decline in the number of persons opting out from having their personal details sold to anyone. This follows a 1% decline in the previous year, as reported by Callcredit in January 2011.

This is a marked reversal of the trend up until 2010, when the number of consumers seeking better privacy of their personal information pushed the proportion relentlessly up, year on year, to a peak of 45% of consumers opting out.

Equifax also reports a 0.8% increase in the number of people registering to vote on the main register, and puts this down to more consumers appreciating that failure to register on the electoral roll can and will damage their ability to get credit. Having said that, Equifax is quick to point out that opting out of the electoral roll being used for marketing purposes does not damage your ability to get credit.

There are two registers – first is the full Electoral Register, which every voter has to be on by law, and which is used to help authenticate people, and – for credit report purposes – is the hook upon which all other data is hung upon. The very first credit report combined the electoral roll with the judgment registers, and credit reports have grown from that simple, basic combination.

Second, the edited version of the Electoral Register is the full version, after removing all those people have been who have said that they are not happy for their personal details to be sold to just any Tom Dick or Harry. In essence they have ‘opted-out’ from allowing any commercial exploitation of the voting registers.

If you wish to see how you are listed on the three separate versions of the registers held by Callcredit, Experian and Equifax, you can do this easily by getting a Multi Agency Credit Report from checkmyfile. You can get this for free by trialling our subscription service for 30 days, after which it costs a very competitive £9.99 per month until you cancel, which you can do at any time.

The checkmyfile Multi Agency Credit Report provides more than twice as much information than any other credit report in the UK, and throws in credit scores and identity fraud protection for free.