First, postcode is something you give out pretty willingly. If you put your postcode and dob into an insurance quote website, they would no longer be insuring based on a pool of people like you. They'd literally just see how many claims you had. And also what ethnicity and sexuality and 50 other personal, irrelevant criteria they want.
The second is that postcode is only a narrow or broad measure depending on what you're using it for. If you want to do a study on asthma rates vs road traffic, postcode is just right, anything more general and you're comparing side streets and motorways. So it makes sense for that data to be available. But wait, as the data user, I only need one more data set (say voter registration, already available) and I can literally look up you're medical history before deciding whether to hire you.
This is the issue here: data HAS to be specific to be useful. But ifs its specific its dangerous. AND data is much more specific than you realise because a few innocent sounding data points are unique to you when combined.
First, postcode is something you give out pretty willingly. If you put your postcode and dob into an insurance quote website, they would no longer be insuring based on a pool of people like you. They'd literally just see how many claims you had. And also what ethnicity and sexuality and 50 other personal, irrelevant criteria they want.
The second is that postcode is only a narrow or broad measure depending on what you're using it for. If you want to do a study on asthma rates vs road traffic, postcode is just right, anything more general and you're comparing side streets and motorways. So it makes sense for that data to be available. But wait, as the data user, I only need one more data set (say voter registration, already available) and I can literally look up you're medical history before deciding whether to hire you.
This is the issue here: data HAS to be specific to be useful. But ifs its specific its dangerous. AND data is much more specific than you realise because a few innocent sounding data points are unique to you when combined.