Do you remember the so-called scandal earlier this month, when it was revealed that UCAS (the charitable company that administers university applications and admissions) was selling on students’ contact details to advertisers?  Charlotte Sexauer of AsianCorrespondent.com delved deeper into the story, and found that there may be less to the controversy than we first assumed:

Essentially, therefore, it would appear as though what UCAS is doing is the same as any other online business – namely, asking students’ permission to send them emails for products that are likely to appeal to them.

I spoke to Charlotte about the issue and my comments were included in her article.  Here I am, riffing on the conceptual difference between the personal information we choose to share on Facebook, and the data that companies hold on us:

The fact that people post reams of data to Facebook is often given as an excuse for companies trading in our personal data, our online activity and our commercial activity,” he says. “But there’s a huge conceptual difference between data we can control and delete, and data stored in a computer record we do not have access to.  Opting out of Facebook may be socially difficult, but anyone can do it in a matter of moments.  Likewise, opting out of the Nectar Card programme is as simple as cutting the purple card in half.  But opting out of a database that you do not even know you are on is a much harder proposition.

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