Jehovah’s Witnesses

[Gardian]

The first thing to say is that I have nothing whatsoever against this religious organisation. Any brief ‘contact’ that I have ever had with them on the doorstep has always been courteous, but brief. Not for me.

Yesterday though, I received a letter with my address handwritten on the envelope, and a clearly mass-produced handwritten letter with a flyer about the JW beliefs. It was posted in France, the text was in excellent English although with enough little errors to indicate a French hand.

My concern relates to the evident free availability of my address. For various reasons, there are about 6 versions of our address, all varying slightly. The one used on the envelope is (I think) the one used by EDF, but it might be one of the other utilities.

Now, rightly or wrongly, we’re a bit paranoid about the risk of ‘identity theft’ and always shred our address details on incoming mail.

Sounds as though we’ve been wasting our time!

[alittlebitfrench]

Blimey...

...I received exactly the same type of letter (handwritten in English) a week ago.

I was gobsmacked.

What is going on ere ?

[nomoss]

It wasn't me!

We had a couple of JW's at the door a few years ago.

I invited them in, sat them down, gave them a cup of tea, and asked "What can we do for you"

"Don't know" they replied, "We never got thjs far before"

[Alan Zoff]

Scary, isn't it?

I recently viewed a car that was being sold by a local dealer. I noted the address of the previous "owner" and managed to find her on Facebook. She was a young woman who told me she did not even have a driving licence and has certainly never owned a car.

I passed on the details so that she - or her parents - could take things further. It seems there had been something previously that had made her suspect that her identity had been stolen.

I didn't buy the car....

[Gardian]

I just had a look through some of my paperwork to try to ascertain where they got my address from.

I unfairly ‘accused’ EDF. It looks very much as though it was Vinci Autoroutes - the spelling of the address, including having an unnecessary ‘d’ on the end of the street name, is identical.

ALBF - do you have a telepeage account? If so, the plot thickens.

Whatever, I think that I shall be having a word with them.

[alittlebitfrench]

We do have a telepeage, but I don't think it is in my name.

I will ask the boss later.

My letter was posted from Saumur...which is a good 80 km's away and in a different department.

The letter got binned so that is as much info I can give.

[cajal]

[Gardian]

I contacted Vinci Autoroutes - their ‘Donnees Personnelles something’

They’ve replied and have said that they’ve investigated and have no reason to believe that their database has been hacked. One of their reasons is that there hasn’t been an ‘outcry’ of complaints.

To be fair, they seem to have taken my question seriously, but my gut feeling is that most people will have simply shredded the JW letter and thought nothing more of it.

My suspicion is that somebody in or close to the Autoroute database has ‘lifted’ a few hundred (or maybe many more) addresses for the purpose of these cold (letter) calls.

It’s ill-advised, but probably pretty harmless.

[Lehaut]

Slightly off topic. I received a call last week, specifically asking for me by name, in English. It came in on our Free 09 line line number which we do not use (I could not even tell you what it is!). He claimed we had a problem with our Orange internet payments.

Struggling to think how they could ping me so accurately (apart from the fact we don't use nor have ever used Orange). And which data base they bought that marries the two facts together.