BBC NEWS | Politics | Voters’ data ‘should not be sold’
Of course it shouldn’t.

If a business compelled customers – and non-customers – to register their details, and then sold on that information, they’d be strung up! But that’s what ‘government’ does with voters’ data. Yes, there’s an opt-out – which is widely used – but the practice of selling-on information undermines trust in government & the democratic process. Which is not a good thing – so it’s not a good trade.

It’s a practice left over from analogue marketing days, when profiling was in its infancy, and targeted marketing almost always created direct mail – where profiling, print, production and postage costs created commercial limits on the volume of direct mail. The first of those – profiling – has moved on dramatically, which allows data companies to do much much more, with less starting data, for a lot less money.

And customers’ relationships with companies has moved on too. Digital marketing centers more on rapid 2-way engagement – there’s less commercial need for electoral data, and the business case is weaker.