GeoDirectory’s mere existence is proof GDPR is toothless.
Art. 17(1) lit. b) of the GDPR. Right to erasure or right to be forgotten. If anyone is interested you just send a request quoting the data protection regulation and you’re good to go.
Does GDPR apply to a collective of area residents though? It does apply to individuals but (unless they do it by household, unclear?) estimating the affluence of any area is not much different than the “Ranelagh vs Crumlin third level education mismatch” headlines or property tax band estimation tools?
Marital status seems to be a breach alright unless it’s an estimation again which is wrong on another level (“Finglas is full of single mothers” so you’re more likely to be one etc.)
Key word here is “accused”. Put the boners away lads.
Here’s hoping they sent the information by post. The private entities will never get it.
If GeoDirectory is searchable by EirCode, then this feels very wrong to me. It wouldn’t take much of a stretch to match an internal database to the GeoDirectory.
I hope I’m overthinking this, but it makes me feel uncomfortable.
A few years ago, I got a TV License invoice in my name, even though I’ve always paid as “Occupier”, in person at the post office, in cash. I filed a GDPR complaint and got a response that An Post was exempt from GDPR. I went with the path of least resistance and went to pay in person and gave a false name. In hindsight, I guess I should have challenged An Post on the EU level.
This sounds like the exact thing privacy advocates were scared about before Eircodes were introduced.
Like they took their fears and used it as a business plan!
This is the ICCL being dumb and not understanding the datasets. All of this is based on data at a “Small Area” level, which is around 100 households (so a few hundred people). The CSO publishes socioeconomic data at a Small Area level. In other words, they take an estate and say “There are 400 people living in this estate. Here’s how many are aged 0, 1, 2, etc…. 10% of the houses were built in the 1970s and the rest in the 1980s. 5% of people are unemployed.” etc etc. None of these measures are linked to each other or individual eircodes.
Then, private companies like GeoDirectory and Equifax use this data. They can’t sell it on as it is l so they profile the estate and say “We’re putting this estate into a category called ‘Young swingers with old houses’” or whatever segments they think up. They then sell this as “proprietary” data for big money even though it’s all based on public data.
Here’s the kicker – they then label each eircode in the Small Area with that segment, even though it’s just an average for the estate. So if you’re just opening their file with zero understanding of how this works, it *looks like they’ve classified each household* when they really haven’t – it’s just the label for the entire estate.
Anyway you can download all the data yourself from CSO.ie from the 2016 census.
Bastards, people gave out shite when you optionally used Facebook and they sold your data.
So now they make it a fineable offence to complete the Census so that can sell ‘complete’ datasets
>A typical entry on the GeoDirectory database includes records of an address, Eircode, type of building, **year of build**, electoral division, and GPS co-ordinates.
If such a record exists why is it asked as a question on the census form ?
I’ve always thought it a pretty stupid question because how would a person renting their home know the answer (and why would they even care) ?
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GeoDirectory’s mere existence is proof GDPR is toothless.
Art. 17(1) lit. b) of the GDPR. Right to erasure or right to be forgotten. If anyone is interested you just send a request quoting the data protection regulation and you’re good to go.
Does GDPR apply to a collective of area residents though? It does apply to individuals but (unless they do it by household, unclear?) estimating the affluence of any area is not much different than the “Ranelagh vs Crumlin third level education mismatch” headlines or property tax band estimation tools?
Marital status seems to be a breach alright unless it’s an estimation again which is wrong on another level (“Finglas is full of single mothers” so you’re more likely to be one etc.)
Key word here is “accused”. Put the boners away lads.
Here’s hoping they sent the information by post. The private entities will never get it.
If GeoDirectory is searchable by EirCode, then this feels very wrong to me. It wouldn’t take much of a stretch to match an internal database to the GeoDirectory.
I hope I’m overthinking this, but it makes me feel uncomfortable.
A few years ago, I got a TV License invoice in my name, even though I’ve always paid as “Occupier”, in person at the post office, in cash. I filed a GDPR complaint and got a response that An Post was exempt from GDPR. I went with the path of least resistance and went to pay in person and gave a false name. In hindsight, I guess I should have challenged An Post on the EU level.
This sounds like the exact thing privacy advocates were scared about before Eircodes were introduced.
Like they took their fears and used it as a business plan!
This is the ICCL being dumb and not understanding the datasets. All of this is based on data at a “Small Area” level, which is around 100 households (so a few hundred people). The CSO publishes socioeconomic data at a Small Area level. In other words, they take an estate and say “There are 400 people living in this estate. Here’s how many are aged 0, 1, 2, etc…. 10% of the houses were built in the 1970s and the rest in the 1980s. 5% of people are unemployed.” etc etc. None of these measures are linked to each other or individual eircodes.
Then, private companies like GeoDirectory and Equifax use this data. They can’t sell it on as it is l so they profile the estate and say “We’re putting this estate into a category called ‘Young swingers with old houses’” or whatever segments they think up. They then sell this as “proprietary” data for big money even though it’s all based on public data.
Here’s the kicker – they then label each eircode in the Small Area with that segment, even though it’s just an average for the estate. So if you’re just opening their file with zero understanding of how this works, it *looks like they’ve classified each household* when they really haven’t – it’s just the label for the entire estate.
Anyway you can download all the data yourself from CSO.ie from the 2016 census.
Bastards, people gave out shite when you optionally used Facebook and they sold your data.
So now they make it a fineable offence to complete the Census so that can sell ‘complete’ datasets
>A typical entry on the GeoDirectory database includes records of an address, Eircode, type of building, **year of build**, electoral division, and GPS co-ordinates.
If such a record exists why is it asked as a question on the census form ?
I’ve always thought it a pretty stupid question because how would a person renting their home know the answer (and why would they even care) ?