Aplogies if I've come late to this subject
After discussion of this on another thread, I've read a bit more, and changed my mind about according to 118800 the benefit on any doubt, which my reply there implied.
My current view is all doubt is removed, and the company is dirt.
I found Dave Gorman's blog, which starts with an anecdotal story about some students coming upon his phone number by accident, and the excessive number of semi-prank calls he then received, which culminated in him changing his phone number
http://gormano.blogspot.com/2009/07/118-800.htmlHe then goes on to compare this saga with the prospects of similar sorts of problems arising with numbers obtained from 118800
But he's not joking, and he found some other important things.
An article in The Register suggests that Connectivity threatened O2 with legal action when O2 refused to give it lists of its customers, O2 saying that only an opt-in approach was appropriate, and the article says that Orange similarly refused
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/12/connectivity_legal_threats/Where it gets insidious is this
Quote:But according to privacy campaigner Simon Davies, who worked as a consultant to Connectivity, the company had calculated that for the business to be viable it would have to use an opt-out consent model.
- and a reply comment on Dave Gorman's blog points to Connectivity's double-dealing comments on an Ofcom questionnaire, in which they try to legalistically argue that they can assume a change of default condition and consent without people having given it
Quote:Connectivity's response to questions about 118800 in the following document indicates its attitude to, and understanding of, consent. You will be interested in their response to Q4.9
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/dirinfo/responses/connectivity.pdfConnectivity: In our view, given that the Information Commissioner, who has responsibility for data protection compliance, has indicated that the Privacy Regulations allow individual subscribers to be included in a directory as a default position as long as the choice available to the individual is well explained and there is a clear opportunity to decide otherwise, the “opt out” approach should be preserved for both types of communications services Oh, that's kind of them, but what efforts did the duplicitous 118800 make to do that explaining to people who were unaware of being imported to their lists? Absolutely bugger all.
To summarise my standing now: the news that 118800 threatened legal action to obtain information from the mobile networks, after those networks had been unable to reassure themselves about 118800's use of their customer data, shows me they have naked contempt for concepts of privacy and consent as most reasonable people would interpret them.