LLoyds & my personal info

SevenOfNine

Got a call at 9pm from a company called Network Research wanting to discuss (with myself or husband, using our surname) a recent visit we made to Lloyds Bank.

Apparently "just customer service satisfaction questions", feedback for Lloyds. I said my feedback would be limited to objecting to Lloyds passing my name, telephone number and the possibility that I banked with Lloyds because I'd visited a branch, to a 3rd party. Then I hung up.

I called Lloyds customer services and specifically asked if Network Research was part of the Lloyds Banking Group - told "yes". When pressed further the operative discovers that the correct answer is "no" - they are a private company Lloyds employ to conduct these surveys.

I am fervently reassured that "no personal info is given to the company". Forgive me, but I consider my name, phone number and banking habits to be personal.

I am advised that I should have "opted out" of this type of contact. However no-one can advise me of when, where or how I have ever accepted (or failed to reject) contact from external organisations relating to my Lloyds bank a/c's or savings.

I have certainly accepted terms and conditions and these specify that my info may be shared amongst the Lloyds Banking Group, nothing about any external 3rd party. It would appear that the default position is that unless you are psychic and object to something you are unaware Lloyds are doing in the first place, your info can be passed wherever they choose. No matter that you may have an ex-directory phone number!

Petty, yes, but I go to great lengths to avoid receiving junk calls and felt the need to rant. :mad:

MPH80

From http://www.lloydsbank.com/privacy.asp

Lloyds Banking Group companies will treat your personal information as private and confidential, but may disclose it outside the Lloyds Banking Group if:

a) Allowed by this agreement
b) You consent
c) Needed by Lloyds Banking Group companies’ agents, advisors or others involved in running accounts and services for you or collecting what you owe Lloyds Banking Group companies
d) HM Revenue & Customs or other authorities require it
e) The law or the public interest permits or requires it; or
f) Required by others to investigate or prevent crime

See line C - they give themselves the ability to transfer your personal details to allow them to do their jobs ... and then from earlier in the page:

Lloyds Banking Group companies may share your personal information with each other.
Your personal information held by Lloyds Banking Group companies may be stored and used for:

a) Providing you with products and, services and notifying you about important changes or developments to the features and operation of those products and services
b) Updating, consolidating and improving the accuracy of our records
c) Crime detection, prevention and prosecution
d) Responding to your enquiries and complaints
e) Administering offers, competitions and promotions
f) Evaluating the effectiveness of marketing and for market research, training, statistical analysis and customer modelling [with the aim of improving services]
g) Assessing lending and insurance risks across the Lloyds Banking Group
h) Identifying products, services and offers which we or others believe may be of interest to you
i) Managing your relationship with Lloyds Banking Group companies, and in the other ways described below; and
j) Producing data, reports and statistics which have been anonymised or aggregated to ensure that they do not identify you as an individual

See line f.

So they've set out that they can send your details to third parties to allow them to manage their services - and then explained that one of the services is marketing.

So while you may not be happy - your statement that they aren't allowed isn't correct.

Standard data protection functions is that you can opt out of marketing contacts and you can opt out of having data given to third parties for THEIR marketing activity.

However, there is provision in the DPA for businesses to be able to transfer personal data to companies acting on their behalf. For example - this allows companies to process payments - they have to send your personal details to THEIR bank (who in turn use it to transfer to your bank) - or they transmit details to a third party call centre.

Not what you want to hear - but just to give you the correct legal understanding.

M.

opinions4u

You missed a chance to tell them how poor they are.

Archi_Bald

OP, if a permanent Lloyds employee would have called, would you have participated in their survey?

jonesMUFCforever

The only information they give out is your name and telephone number and the date that you called at a branch.
Lloyds are by no means the only one to do this - all online surveys that appear on your websites work this way as well as loads of other multinational companies doing this.

My only grouch - the bank never take on board what the customers are complaining about ie mostly queues.

Gers

I had telephone contact after a suspected fraudulent transaction - the caller only asked about the service from the fraud department, never asked me any personal questions and stuck to a rigid script. Don't think I helped much as my answers didn't always fall between the ranges he gave me.

I opted out of all marketing calls and mailings with Lloyds years and years ago and this is only the second call from them in all that time.

Nothing worried me or I would have hung up. At least they were asking about their service, albeit a small area of it.

Yorkie1

I had that call in the last week or two and was happy to participate.

They didn't ask me any details about my bank account, or what I'd gone in for. Absolutely nothing which compromised my ID.

It was simply to ask about whether I'd had to wait a long time, how the cashier dealt with the transaction, whether they were pleasant to deal with, whether I knew that the branch had been selected for this survey that week etc.

SevenOfNine

MPH80 - Thanks for that, I stand corrected.
Archibald - No, who knows who it is on the other end of the phone.
JonesMUFCForever - An ex-directory phone number, there's no 'only' about that bit for me. As MPH80 has rightly pointed out though, I shouldn't have given it to the bank as they DO have the right to pass it on.
Yorkie1 - I don't compromise my ID by confirming to a total stranger over the phone that I bank with Lloyds, don't care how harmless sounding the rest of the questions might be.

I did once get a call from a supposed Lloyds employee, from the fraud dept with 'concerns' regarding my c/c. Asked me to go through the 'security questions' to confirm my ID before discussing it further...........yeah, as if.

She got a right mouthful, why would I tell a total stranger the answers to security questions - I'd no idea if she was genuine. In the end she suggested I call the number on my c/c.

I thought I'd leave it several hours before doing that (making and receiving other calls in the meantime) then I went shopping. Whopping great Tesco shop sliding down the belt, & at transaction point my bl**dy card was declined.

Genuine fraud call after all and they'd cut my card off! Quite funny at the time. Maybe I'm just a bit neurotic.

opinions4u

Maybe I'm just a bit neurotic.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

jamesd

SevenOfNine wrote: »

Maybe I'm just a bit neurotic.

Not neurotic. Aware of the security risks and acting appropriately based on those risks. Specifically:

1. Knowing that calling back on the number on the card means that the call may instead go to a fraudster who has only pretended to hang up. A call isn't disconnected until the caller does that, so some frauds involve playing a dial tone down the phone line to trick the person called. Some of those specifically say to call the number on the card. Using a different phone line or calling a place known to you and acting as though you have phoned the fraud department may counter this: the known recipient of the call will deny being the fraud department, while the person engaging in fraud probably won't know that you didn't dial the number on your card.

2. An unauthenticated person asking you to provide security details. If you were to provide them you would be breaching the terms of service of the bank T&C I've seen by disclosing them to an unknown person.

It's unfortunate that bank fraud departments think that it is acceptable practice to plan on customers responding when contacted in exactly the way they should not respond. I'd hope that the fraud people know that they are training people to act in an unsafe way and not to do it. It's not that hard to agree some authentication method that an employee can use before asking for the security information and unlike the customer, the employee already knows that they have called a number that is associated with the person they are trying to contact in some way.

Yorkie1

jamesd wrote: »

Not neurotic. Aware of the security risks and acting appropriately based on those risks. Specifically:

...

2. An unauthenticated person asking you to provide security details. If you were to provide them you would be breaching the terms of service of the bank T&C I've seen by disclosing them to an unknown person.

It's unfortunate that bank fraud departments think that it is acceptable practice to plan on customers responding when contacted in exactly the way they should not respond. I'd hope that the fraud people know that they are training people to act in an unsafe way and not to do it. It's not that hard to agree some authentication method that an employee can use before asking for the security information and unlike the customer, the employee already knows that they have called a number that is associated with the person they are trying to contact in some way.

Specifically in the context of the OP's post, no security details were sought or provided in this customer service call (or the one I received at the same time). Just wanted to flag that up. The only 'personal' question was whether I had visited a Lloyds bank recently / in the last week or so. All of the other questions related to the experience, how the cashiers did, whether I had to wait for long etc.