NZ Post's survey spy
New Zealand
Post are at it again with their New
Zealand Lifestyle Survey 2011 -- a prize-driven inducement to
invade your privacy.The survey comes in either a personally addressed envelope or it can be completed online. Both versions comprise six pages of detailed and highly personal questions. In addition to your name, address, phone number, mobile number and email address, they want to know about your;
- Interests
- Vehicles
- Home
- Finances
- Shopping habits
- Travel
and then a bit of "General Information" such as your;
- Age
- Sex
- Ethnicity
- Marital status
- Children (ages and sexes)
- Job
- What you spend your free time doing
- Annual income
- Sources of income
- and even what charities you support
I've complained about this before. Why? Because of clauses like this;
If
you participate in The New Zealand Lifestyle Survey, your name and
address may be provided to companies and other organisations from New
Zealand and overseas to enable them to provide you and/or your
household with information about products and services relevant to your
responses to this survey. New Zealand Post may also use that
information for the same purpose.
On their website, the company take pains to sooth privacy concerns;
Access
to survey data is tightly controlled to authorised personnel within New
Zealand Post for approved purposes only, such as data entry and
administration.
But what about that data being supplied to companies and other organisations from New Zealand and overseas? It may only be names and addresses, but the granularity of the survey allows marketers to ask extremely detailed questions such as;
"Give me a list of all married couples in Ponsonby with a before tax income of at least $100,000, who own a late model Honda, have two or more cats, shop at Pak'n'Save and who are not satisfied with their electricity supplier."
Are you happy with anyone -- and in particular a private company -- having this much information about you for sale to whoever wants it?
So am I advocating binning or boycotting this survey? Not at all! Fill it in by all means, there's a remote chance you might even win a prize. Just remember, nowhere does it state you have to provide them with truthful answers. Imagine if half the respondents simply lie. Rather pollutes that "valuable" data pool, doesn't it?
Now, what model of Rolls Royce do I drive again ...?
PC World is New Zealand’s top selling computing and technology magazine.
Comments
Of course, if one were feeling sufficiently annoyed with the survey, one could send it back blank in their prepaid envelope.
Jim
Posted by: Jim | June 29, 2011 10:27 PM