The Childrens Mutual, Capital One and other Junk Mail

Anthony Hilton, writing for the Standard, is one of my favourite commentators of the City in London. This last Friday, four days after the Black Monday of 21st of January 2008 he reflected that It would be nice to think the world’s bankers could be left to twist in the wind, paying the price for their mistakes, but the world does not work like that. The credit-crunch […] may be entirely caused by their greed and excess but everyone else will pay the price.

He doesn’t stop there: The financial sector is already turning down fast and the UK economy is now a giant hedge fund with a huge bet on financial services - and no Plan B for when it all goes wrong. For the past 10 years London has reaped rich rewards from the global financial boom and it will again in the future […] The main engine driving the UK economy is running on empty.

I don’t know who has or have the data on as many as 25 million people in the UK that the government “lost” a couple of months ago. It is tempting to speculate with the idea that the data is already in the market and up for takers. Child Benefit data is a product with a relative long shelf life, so we might never know when it is sold and to whom.

I registered at a junk mail prevention scheme, The Mailing Preference Service (MPS), some time ago. I don’t allow any bank and company I deal with to use our personal data for uses other than the ones pertaining our accounts with them. I am that type of customer concerned about data privacy who always tick the box “Don’t allow to use your data for…”.

Many companies and bank have a liberal approach to the privacy of the data of their customers, like Citibank regardless of having to operate under the most protective legal scheme in the world, the EU Data Protection Directive.

I just received at home a commercial offer to buy a Baby Bond Trust Fund account from The Children’s Mutual. Apart from using my data without our written consent, The Children’s Mutual is a shrewd marketer. Their letter and voucher have the clean interface of those type of documents from public services which profusely include multirracial pictures. ,The Children’s Mutual’s letter reads read like a letter from public services: “Baby Bond is a ’stakeholder’ CTF account - the Government’s preferred way of growing your child’s saving.“. Impeccable syntax for an imperceptible association of names and concepts.

The Children’s Mutual is a trading name of the Turnbridge Wells Equitable Group, registered in England. If The Children’s Mutual didn’t buy our data, how did they get it and how do they get away with using it?

Mailings from Capital One is staple junk mail in many households already. I actually opened the last envelope just to see if they can keep up amazing me. I have to admit they do: their letter was headed by big bold capital letters in red: CONFIRMATION PRE-SELECTED TO APPLY [for a Capital One Visa card], along with a ‘Customer’ Reference No., a tick on a box entitled: checked by: FM and a fake paper card with a Siberian tiger design… y copyrighted by Corbis. The credit a rate is 39.9% APR, variable. Wow. Capital One is a mark of Capital one Bank (Europe) plc, registered in England.