Protect your personal details

What do we mean by personal details?

All these things and more:

Your name (including any middle names)
Where you live, and where you’ve lived in the past
Your date of birth
Where you were born
Where you went to school
What jobs you do and what jobs you’ve done in the past
Your phone numbers and email addresses
Who you live with
Financial details, including bank account and credit card numbers
Your National Insurance and NHS numbers
PINs (Personal Identification Numbers) and passwords
Key information (such as your mother’s maiden name or the name of your pet) which may be used to identify you
Your habits and preferences – what you like, what you do in your spare time etc
Other personal information, such as health issues or disabilities

Telling people your personal details

Just as sometimes you’re happy to let people come into your home, sometimes you’ll be happy to open the ‘lock’ and let others know some of your personal details.

Cold callers
For example:

Your doctor needs to know aspects of your life, so that you can be given the right treatment
Your mortgage company will normally need to know what job you do and how much you earn before giving you a mortgage
A bank will require personal details including your date of birth before opening a bank account for you.

Sometimes you’ll definitely NOT want to give away personal information.

For example:

Don’t let anyone else know your cash machine PIN – they could steal your card and withdraw your money
Don’t tell strangers key personal information which they could use to steal your identity and commit fraud

Sometimes, it’s less clear-cut and the choice will be yours. You’ll want to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of giving information about yourself away.

For example:

Some people are happy to complete lifestyle consumer questionnaires, identifying the things they buy and their leisure activities. Some people aren’t.
Some people sign up to supermarket loyalty cards. This means that they may receive cash back or discounts; on the other hand, the supermarkets will discover and record a lot about their favourite brands and the things they buy.
Some people are happy when asked to answer surveys about their views or voting preferences.

In cases like these, only you will be able to decide whether the benefits outweigh the loss of privacy involved. But remember – the choice should be yours, nobody else’s.

What information are YOU happy to give away?

Do you mind:

having your telephone number published in the phone directory?
accepting phone calls from companies ringing you up to try to sell you things?
companies sending you advertising mail?
giving your name and address to companies, so that you can be put on mailing lists that interest you?
giving your email address out?

There are no right or wrong answers: you decide. (However, if you did answer ‘no’ to any of these questions, we’ll tell you later in this leaflet what you can do about it.)

Why are your personal details valuable?

We live in a world where, more and more, companies and organisations rely on information which they hold about us. They use this information in various ways: sometimes to help us, sometimes to provide us with services, and sometimes to try to sell us things.

Sometimes, too, personal information can be used by people or organisations for fraudulent or unwelcome purposes.

Information about us is normally held in computer databases. Computers can quickly sort through masses of data and match things together to find out more about you, or the information can easily be copied and passed on to other people. For this reason, the risk of abuse is greater than it was in the old days. People now need to be more vigilant when giving away information about themselves.

What use could be made of your personal details?

People may try to steal the money from your bank accounts.
People may try to pretend to be you, for example by borrowing money in your name.
People may want to find out more about you so that they can trick you, perhaps into giving them money.
People may annoy you with unwanted letters, phone calls or emails.
People who you would rather not be in touch with (for example, former partners, work colleagues or dissatisfied customers from your work) may be able to track you down.