Sir, – On a recent visit to Birmingham, I found myself invited to join a “free” WiFi network, allowing internet access to my smartphone throughout the city centre. All that was required to avail of this service was to register with my name, email address and postcode. Why the postcode? Because this small piece of information told the WiFi provider (and the undisclosed third parties with whom they share it) about the street where the user lives. This is a strong indicator of the user’s social class, ethnic background, likely income bracket and voting preferences, all valuable data for consumer profiling.
Once subscribed, the phone itself conveys information about the user’s every movement; where they went, how long they spent there, and (if one’s friends are also subscribers) whom they were with.
Users are then profiled for targeted advertising, and as we don’t know who else shares this information, we are also ignorant of other uses it may be put to, now or in the future. The cost of such “free” internet services is the user’s anonymity as the service is not available unless personal data is offered to complete strangers.
The newly launched Eircode goes considerably further than the UK postcode system because it locates exact addresses rather than streets and neighbourhoods.
Its potential for mining of personal data is even greater.
As the current means of addressing letters and packages seems to work highly efficiently without an Eircode, and as major courier companies are not happy with the new system, it prompts the question of who has been driving this move and why. Does being a “modern society” necessarily mean allowing the mining of personal data by businesses, “third parties” or even states?
Once such codes become obligatory for completing online forms, subscribing to services, and so on – and as my experience in Birmingham shows it is likely that this would become the norm – our right to be anonymous citizens will be seriously compromised.
In the meantime our letters will still probably be delivered by postmen who know the people in the area anyway – just as ambulances, taxi drivers and couriers hardly ever turn up at the wrong address, even without a code.
As satellite navigation (sat nav) systems have shown us, once we depend on codes rather than common sense we are more likely to end up in the wrong place, not less.
Because Eircodes are currently unnecessary and pose a genuine risk to our data privacy in the longer term, I would argue that it is not logically in our interests to use them. – Yours, etc,
TONY LANGLOIS,
Cork.