Personal Data

We obtain relatively little actual personal data from our data partners and this consists of:

• Contact data - name, postal address, email address and mobile phone number. We only take contact data from these partners where permission exists for contact for marketing purposes through the relevant channel(s) e.g. by post or email (see the section on our Prospect Services on our How we use Your Personal Data page). Note that Experian does not provide landline or mobile numbers to organisations to be used for telemarketing or SMS marketing for prospecting for new customers, as we recognise the intrusiveness of telephone and mobile channels when used for this marketing activity.
• Date of birth - this is your self-reported data and will have been shared by some of our data suppliers who collect this information and where appropriate permissions exist to pass this on to third parties like Experian.
• Home and motor insurance renewal dates - this is your self-reported data and will have been shared by some of our data suppliers who collect this information and where appropriate permissions exist to pass this on to third parties like Experian.
• Internet Protocol (IP) address - IP address records are shared with us by some of our data suppliers who collect this information where appropriate permission exists to pass this on to third parties like Experian.

Experian Marketing Services’ current list of data partners are listed below. Click here to view a full list of the data partner and source websites.

We use this data to:

• Check the accuracy of data we obtain from other third-party sources (see “Third party partners for marketing data”) to ensure the IP addresses that we hold are up to date.
• Connect advertisers and publishers together to enable relevant advertisements to be displayed across digital marketing channels, such as websites, social media platforms, mobile apps, and on other web connected devices such as Smart TVs (see the section on our “Powering consistent marketing” for more information).

These records may need to be removed because:

• they are no longer accurate, for example where it is known that an individual no longer lives at that address.
• an individual has passed away.
• an individual has expressed a preference to be excluded from marketing.

Our clients use suppression data to either remove records from their files, or to flag their data where a match has occurred, so this can be imported back into their marketing database and acted upon. We also use suppression data when building our own products and services.

Responsible use of suppression files by organisations:

• ensures that our records and those of our clients are fully up-to-date and accurate, ensuring that consumers receive the communication intended for them; and avoids mis-directing communications that are sent by our clients.
• prevents further distress for families of deceased individuals by minimising further marketing communications to that individual.
• ensures that any marketing preferences expressed by an individual, for example to not receive direct mail or telephone marketing, are respected by organisations who are sending marketing campaigns.

Our third-party suppression data sets have a number of purposes:

• Identifying individuals who have moved. Often referred to as "goneaways", these files are used to accurately identify and validate where individuals have left an address. Our third-party sources of this data include: the National Change of Address (NCOA) - Suppress File from the Royal Mail; Re-mover from The Ark; and the GoneAway Suppression (GAS) file from Sagacity Solutions Ltd.
• Identifying where individuals have moved to. The Royal Mail's National Change of Address (NCOA) - Update file contains the forwarding addresses of individuals who have registered with the service, enabling organisations to suppress the old address from marketing communications for that customer, and for their records to be updated with their current address in order to maintain, or regain, contact with individuals when they move to a new house.
• Identifying individuals who are deceased. To prevent further distress to the families of deceased persons, there are several commercial files available to help organisations identify deceased and suppress these individuals from any marketing campaigns or communications. Our third-party sources of this data include: Mortascreen from Wilmington Millennium; The Bereavement Register (TBR) from Sagacity Solutions Ltd; and the National Deceased Register (NDR) from The Ark.
• Identifying individuals who do not wish to be contacted for marketing. Often known as "preference" data, this identifies records where a consumer has joined an 'opt-out' list to indicate that they do not want to be contacted via a particular marketing channel. Matched records would be removed from contact files to ensure consumers do not receive unwanted marketing communications via the channels they have specified. These data sets are used by our clients and by Experian. Use of these files by organisations is either recommended best practice or a legal requirement.
• The Mailing Preference Service (MPS) is run by The Direct Marketing Association and is the official 'do not mail' register in the UK. It enables individuals to opt out of unsolicited, personally addressed advertising mail (Consumers can register with the MPS for free). Screening mailing lists against MPS and other mailing suppression files is a condition of DMA membership (to which Experian belong) and is regarded as best practise across the marketing industry.
• A version of MPS called BabyMPS is also run by The Data & Marketing Association, which enables parents who have suffered a miscarriage or bereavement of a baby in the first weeks of life to register their wish not to receive baby related mailings.
• The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a free service run by The Data & Marketing Association on behalf of The Information Commissioners Office (ICO). It is the official central opt out register on which you can record your preference not to receive unsolicited sales or marketing calls. It is a legal requirement that all organisations (including charities, voluntary organisations and political parties) do not make such calls to numbers registered on the TPS unless they have your consent to do so.

The Edited Electoral Roll (EER), often called the 'Open Register' is a subset of the full Electoral Register or Electoral Roll (ER) which lists the names and addresses of everyone eligible to vote in each Local Authority in the UK.

Being included in this ‘Open Register’ means that your name and address is publicly available for anyone to purchase from the Local Authority for any purpose, such as direct marketing

Your name, address and date of birth will be included in the EER unless you ask your local Electoral Registration Office for them to be removed. Note that your date of birth is only required on the electoral forms when the individual is a “young attainer”, and date of birth is declared to show that they will turn 18 in the upcoming year(s).

When you first register to vote, you can decide to be on the EER, which means that your name and address is publicly available for anyone to purchase from the Local Authority for any purpose, such as direct marketing. Each Local Authority has their own registration form for the ER and the wording used to explain about the Open Register/EER may vary by Local Authority.

Along with data from our data partners, we use the EER - this subset of the ER - within our marketing database for several purposes:

• For address and age validation - to check that the marketing names and addresses that come from our data partners are valid and to remove any individuals who show as under 18 in the EER.
• As a source of marketing contact details - to provide additional names, addresses and date of birth (where this exists on EER) to organisations for postal marketing purposes, to help them find potential new customers.
• To enable matching, linking and insight - names and address in the EER that we don’t see from any other sources are used for matching and linking our segmentations and modelled data to a client’s existing customer base to provide insight. We also use names and addresses from the EER to provide insight into the ‘make-up’ of the UK population across: age (from date of birth); composition of the household (based on who lives at that address); and length of residency (based on when we first see a record in EER). These pieces of information inform our models and segments which our clients use to create more relevant marketing communications for you.

You can opt out of your information being held on the EER at any time by contacting your local Electoral Registration Office and are given the opportunity to opt out annually as part of your Local Authority's Canvass of all households. Your details will then not be included in the Open Register. Removing your details from the Open Register does not affect your right to vote.

Experian processes the latest version of the EER, including any monthly updates supplied by the Local Authorities. If you choose to opt out directly with us processing your data for our clients' direct marketing purposes, this opt out will always be applied to our marketing database even if your details continue to appear on the EER.

The Government’s website provides further information on the Electoral Register and the "Open Register".

We use the data in Experian Marketing Services for matching, linking and insight.

The Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines contains the name and address of the individual concerned, their date of birth (if supplied to the court), the case, court number and date of the particular order and the amount that the court has ordered be paid. Once the case has been resolved, the Register will be updated to also include this fact.

We use the data in for matching, linking and insight:

• Names and address in the file that we don't see from any other sources are used for supplementing our view of the identities of the UK Adult population.
• We append our segmentations and modelled data to this view, which can then be used to match to a client's existing customer base to provide insight.
• We use names and addresses from the data, alongside other sources of names and addresses, to help provide insight into the 'make-up' of the UK population across: composition of the household (based on who lives at that address); and length of residency (based on when we first see a record in the CCJ file). These variables inform our models and segments so that what we build for our clients can drive more relevant marketing communications for you.
• It informs our credit marketing suppression product which enables us to uphold responsible lending by screening out marketing contact details from any marketing activity where the financial services being offered are inappropriate to the circumstances of the individual.

We use this data to identify names on our marketing file where the individual is a director of an organisation (where the director has provided their home address to Companies House).

While the Companies Act requires company directors to provide their usual residential address, it is not shown on the public record and only made available to credit reference agencies and specified public authorities. Should a Director choose to register their residential address as their service address, registered office or subscriber address then it will always appear as a part of the public record even if changed at a later date.

We use this data to:

• Flag names on our marketing file to identify where the individual is a director of an organisation (where the director has provided their home address to Companies House). Additional insight into the size of the company (either > or < than 50 employees) is also appended from the Experian's business marketing file.
• Names and address in the file that we don’t see from any other sources are used for supplementing our view of the identities of the UK Adult population and used for matching and linking purposes.

Customers of the Communication Providers provide their consent for their telephone number details to be included in the directory.

The OSIS data is licensed by Experian so that the file can be used by our clients to validate phone numbers that they already hold against an individual. We do not change the nature of the BT OSIS file, only matching it to client data as instructed by the client. It is not used in the build of any of our products.

In detail, the information from our credit reference business is used in our Marketing Services business for the following purposes:

• Validation and ensuring accuracy - validating marketing names and addresses we see from our data partners to ensure that, as far as possible, these contact names and addresses belong to an individual aged 18+. This reference data also helps to keep our clients’ data accurate, for example by helping to ensure communications are not sent to people at incorrect addresses or to individuals who have passed away; and that we have accurate Titles and Forenames for individuals. This all helps to protect you against fraud by ensuring that communications intended for you, reach you.
• Insight and modelling - into the 'make-up' of the UK population for characteristics across age, gender, number of adults in a household, composition of the household and length of residency. These variables inform our models and segments so that what we build for our clients can drive more relevant marketing communications for you.
• Matching and linking - matching our modelled data and segments to a client's existing customer base to help them communicate with you more relevantly (where they have appropriate permissions to do so) and linking together separate address records which an organisation might hold on you and removing duplicated to create a more accurate record for you. This helps our clients to create a better and more consistent marketing communication experience for their customers.
• Responsible and relevant marketing - through an understanding of a person’s financial history, we enable our clients to uphold responsible lending by screening out marketing contact details from any marketing activity where the financial services being offered are inappropriate to the circumstances of the individual.

For avoidance of doubt, outside of confirming an individual is over 18 or resident at the provided address through the presence of a recent active account at the address (1. above), an individual's financial data is only used for creating credit marketing suppressions (screening out) to enable responsible marketing (4. above). The only data from the credit activity data used across the other uses are identities (names and addresses) and date of birth. Names and addresses from the credit files are never used to identify or send marketing materials to potential new customers.

The Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN) is a processing notice which Experian has developed with the other UK credit reference agencies, with input from the Information Commissioner's Office and several financial services trade associations. CRAIN (in conjunction with the Information Pages provided on this website) helps to explain these purposes.