By the way, I think I have figured it out, and it's a neat little gig where Australia Post is playing the consumer and/or Acxiom is playing Australia Post.
It revolves around this line:
When completing a Mail Redirection, movers are asked to give Australia Post permission to pass their new address details on to organisations with their name and old address. What there is on the form, aside from the Marketing Op-In tickboxes, is another tick box that says:
would you like us to Automatically update your address with businesses (eg, Power, gas providers,etc) that already have your name and address.That sounds fairly harmless right, and I'm sure that my wife or I might have ticked that on one of our redirections.
Now along comes Acxiom, they have the 2004 electoral roll, which is apparently freely available to anyone to download.
They then purchase AP's service, and tell them "look here's Kiteboy's Name, DOB, and Address (as it was in 2004).
AP then says ok, he's obviously your existing customer, here's his current address and any other details you'd care to pay for.
That way AP can
a/ trick you into ticking a box that sounds helpful and nothing marketing related
and
b/ claim that they only sell to companies that have you as an existing customer, ie we're just being helpful.
So they walk away with a clear conscience.
No proof yet, but that's my theory.
