Marketing services and your data

The Standalone open register consists of names and addresses of people who have registered to vote in the UK and have not opted out of the open register.

The open register can be bought from local authorities by anyone and used for any purpose, including direct marketing. We obtain it from local authorities and then supply it to our clients. Our clients can use it to send advertising to people through the post.

If you want to opt out of the open register at source (so that your local authority stops supplying your name and address to all businesses, including TransUnion), please see here.  If you just want to opt out of TransUnion's copy of the open register, please see "Opting out" above.

What we do and don't do with this data

We do...

• obtain the open register from local authorities and supply it to our clients for postal advertising

We don't...

• use credit reference data to provide clients with information about people's financial status for marketing purposes

Our CAMEO UK datasets categorise and describe the likely characteristics of groups of households or postcodes and the people who live there. Group and categorising geographical areas and people in this way is sometimes called "segmentation".

CAMEO contains modelled data, which means it is inferred or estimated based on other information we hold such as the areas in which people live. For example, CAMEO data can be based on estimates of the average age, wealth and education level of the residents of an area, how rural or urban the area is, and what sort of properties there are there.

Our CAMEO data is available at two levels:

• Postcode level: Where CAMEO is held at postcode level, we do not consider it to be personal data because it only describes the likely characteristics of a population across entire postcodes. It does not identify individuals or distinguish between them.
• Household level: Where CAMEO is held at household level it can be personal data depending on how many people are in a particular household. Because we do not know at any point in time how many people are living in a household, we treat the entire CAMEO household level dataset as personal data as a precaution.

In either case, where CAMEO data is associated with a specific individual's name and address and used to make decisions affecting that individual, it is that person's personal data.

We supply CAMEO UK to our clients for a range of different purposes. For example, clients might use it to help understand the likely characteristics of their customers, or to decide which geographical areas to focus their marketing activity on, depending on the types of product they sell.

Similar datasets are also available for other countries.

What we do and don't do with this data

We do...

• use non-personal datasets from third parties to help build our CAMEO products and help clients target their advertising and make it more relevant to individuals
• use credit reference data (but not any financial information) to work out average ages and numbers of adults per household to help build our CAMEO product
• supply CAMEO data to clients to help them better understand their customer base and to help target their marketing at appropriate groups of customers

We don't...

• include financial credit reference data as part of CAMEO

Our Property data provides a list of residential addresses together with information about the properties. For example, the data can indicate whether the property is a flat, a terraced house, a semi-detached house or a detached house, whether it has a garden and what council tax band applies to it. The data doesn't contain information about who lives in the property.

Our Homemover data provides a list of residential addresses together with information about the sale and rental status of those properties. For example, the data can indicate whether a property is for sale or available to let. Again, it doesn't contain information about who lives in the property.

We supply this data to clients to help them decide which properties they should send marketing to, and when. For example, a company selling conservatories could use the data to help send its marketing to houses with gardens, rather than to flats. Or a utility or home insurance company may use the data to help send its marketing to properties where people have recently moved in.

In some cases, we use these datasets in combination with each other to help meet a client's specific requirements. For example, a client may provide us with a list of postcodes for its existing customers, and ask us to find addresses which may have similar people living there. We can use CAMEO to find postcodes where we estimate similar people might live, and Property data to produce a list of addresses in those postcodes. The client can send postal marketing to those addresses.

What we do and don't do with this data

We do...

• use property-level data from third parties to provide information to our clients for their marketing purposes

We don't...

• use credit reference data to provide clients with information about people's financial status for marketing purposes