Keeping mum on personal data usage
Lifecycle Marketing Group (LMG), which operates the website Emma's Diary aimed at new mothers, has been fined £140,000 by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for illegally profiling mothers and selling the data to a political party.
LMG is based in Bucks, and one of its websites, Emma's Diary, is aimed at expectant and new mothers. The website is a mixture of articles and targeted advertising, and allows visitors to register for special offers. In the lead up the 2017 General Election, LMG sold information on over a million of its users to credit reference agency Experian, specifically for use by the Labour Party.
The information sold by LMG included home address, whether children up to the age of five were present in the household, and the dates of birth of both mothers and children. Experian used this data to profile mothers in areas with marginal seats, so that the Labour Party campaign could send them mailings about Sure Start centres.
The ICO investigation determined that Emma's Diary had failed to disclose to visitors that data would be passed on to political parties and fined them £140,000 (which is less than 15p per record). LMG is very apologetic and has stated "We had never previously provided data to a political party and we will never do so again". Surprisingly, there is no suggestion from the ICO that Experian or the Labour Party did anything wrong, although one wonders how they could possibly have bought such sensitive data and not have asked probing questions at all about its legitimacy.
To its credit, Emma's Diary has one of the more transparent privacy policies on its website, although it still runs to 4,600 words, about 15 pages if printed out on sheets of A4, (two to three times longer than the whole of this newsletter), and it does say quite clearly "All the data we collect from you, as an expectant or new mother, is for marketing purposes only. This means we may share your details with reputable companies who may want to contact you to offer goods and services relevant to your pregnancy journey". Notice the liberal use of the word "may".
30th August 2018
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.