beware of passing dob to car phone warehouse

truthman007

I thought of buying a phone from car phone warehouse. After selected the item they ask me to register and entered my date of birth as well.

why do they ask for my date of birth. Why do we have to send our personal details to them.

Vedrina

If it's for a contract I imagine it's for a credit check, if not it maybe to keep a record of the phone/sim-card owner. Was the sales assistant unable to explain why?

truthman007

It was on website before buy, they ask us to Register, pay as you go one.

Forwandert

The DOB is probably just standard for registrations for them as they deal with a lot of contracts. As for any other details required how would you get the phone delivered without giving them personal details?

Vedrina

The privacy policy says this:

Uses made of the information
We use information held about you in the following ways:

• to provide you with goods and/or services that you have ordered
• to prevent and detect fraud, crime and money laundering
• to check your identity
• to trace and recover debts
• for credit and credit related services and to manage your accounts
• to update our records about you
• to make credit, fraud and identity checks on you (when applicable)

The key thing is probably this however:

2. Orders
2.1. Goods and Services are available only to individuals who we, in our absolute discretion, consider eligible. The eligibility criteria include, without limitation, those whose applications are acceptable to us and those who are residents in the UK. Services that come with minimum term contracts are only available to individuals who are 18 years old or over and by ordering or otherwise purchasing such Services, you confirm that you are 18 years old or over.

truthman007

I think, this is too much personal information we pass it to them for marketing purpose. DOB is the key to unlock most of the email accounts and communicate to bank.

DOB is not necessary to deliver something.

mije1983

truthman007 wrote: »

I think, this is too much personal information we pass it to them for marketing purpose. DOB is the key to unlock most of the email accounts and communicate to bank.

DOB is not necessary to deliver something.

As explained above, it is used to confirm you are who you say you are. If you don't wish to provide that information, then just shop somewhere else.

Personally, I don't need my DOB to access my email account, nor my online banking. There are other questions that are asked instead.

JReacher1

truthman007 wrote: »

I think, this is too much personal information we pass it to them for marketing purpose. DOB is the key to unlock most of the email accounts and communicate to bank.

DOB is not necessary to deliver something.

Why don't you just give a fake DOB?

username

Make one up!

I don't get why anyone feels obliged to give their real information if they feel it is not relevant to the application.

I'm not a fan of giving my real details to all and sundry, so where they insist on me giving them to register for something unimportant or get spammed/marketed to death, then I just make it up.

Their database gets filled with crap, I get to keep my information private. :T

mije1983

username wrote: »

Make one up!

JReacher1 wrote: »

Why don't you just give a fake DOB?

It depends what the OP is intending to buy. If it is a contract based service, then a false DOB will only lead to the application being rejected as they would fail a credit check.

username

mije1983 wrote: »

It depends what the OP is intending to buy. If it is a contract based service, then a false DOB will only lead to the application being rejected as they would fail a credit check.

True, but I'm sure most people are able to differentiate between the two scenarios of where you need to give personal information - because the application depends on it versus where they ask for it for marketing purposes.

Of course you will need to provide your real DOB for a contract phone, but in this situation he is buying a PAYG phone.

In this case it's fine to give duff information, after all, what has my real DOB got any relevance to buying a pay as you go phone?!? I would be asking the same questions...