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[kitz]

Over the past couple of months Ive started getting a small amount of personalised junk mail.  I've always been extremely careful about opting out and I cannot recall ever signing up to anything where I would have allowed my personal details to be shared with any third party.  This morning I got mail to me using my full name saying that I "could be owed significant compensation relating to your unfair car finance agreements" from the company reclaimNOW.com. 

In it I'm invited to find out if I have a car finance claim with.... and they list my bank.  There are a 5 more finance companies listed, but it just seemed slightly weird that the first financial company name at the top was where I had had a previous car loan many years ago. This name of my bank isnt one of the more common banks or finance companies.  Perhaps if I banked with say Barclays, Santander, Lloyds, HBS or had used say Vauxhall/VW/Ford/etc finance or one of the big finance companies.   It just seemed an enormous co-incidence for them to have used the name for what is a much smaller regional named bank.   The thing is, if they did have details of my bank sort code as used on a direct debit elsewhere, then it wouldn’t be too hard to find out the name of my bank... but the big question here, is where had they got this info from?

Perhaps Im being paranoid, but with this particular junk mail listing my bank name just felt like they had access to financial data for which I'd never given consent. So I dug deeper on this one.  The small print on the reverse said

You received this mail from ReclaimNOW because we believe you may be interested in our products and services.  We have sourced your details from Sagacity.  If you would prefer not to receive information from ReclaimNOW in the future you can opt out of further communication by emailing feedback@reclaimnow.com.  If you would like to be removed from Sagacity's database please email dpo@sagacitysolutions.co.uk or visit www.my datachoices.co.uk to unsubscribe.

A search on the internet implies that Sagacity are deep into dataharvesting, analytics and building datasets.  Urgggghh.  I really dislike these companies who make it their business to gather and build dataprofiles on people.  They then share the info to practically _anyone_ in exchange for a fee.


I'd love to know which company shared my personal info with Sagacity but that could be extremely difficult to pinpoint.  Apparently Sagacity dont just trawl social media type of sites; nope;  they build new datasets by collecting raw personal data from gov & public records.  Info is obtained anywhere and everywhere, the list of their sources is practically endless.  Credit Bureaus, local authorities, electoral roll, utility & telco companies, linked in, twitter.  These guys are the profilers that know everything about us and all linked together. It can be bought by anyone if you have the money.   I always say Ive got nothing to hide, but I still find stuff like this rather creepy. 

There's tons of stuff on the Internet about Sagacity and controversies about what they have been involved with.  Based on what they do Im surprised that Ive not heard the name before.  I'm not sure how worthwhile it will be filling in a removal request.  By filling in the form, Im giving them an email address that can be linked with my name and address and IP.  I cba searching further - its a rabbit hole waiting to swallow you up, one that could keep you occupied for weeks.  I'll leave it with a couple of summaries and laugh at the irony of using AI to search on them. 

[kitz]

A couple of summaries

Chat GPT > Who are Sagacity and where do they get their data? > Sagacity the company

🏢 Who Sagacity Are

Sagacity (often called Sagacity Solutions Ltd) is a data insights and analytics consultancy based in London. They help organisations use data to improve customer engagement, marketing, billing, collections, risk, and operational decisions. They work across sectors like utilities, telecoms, retail, insurance and financial services. Founded in 2005, they are a medium-sized, privately-held company with ~150-200 employees and clients including major UK brands.

Sagacity positions itself as a “data intelligence” partner, helping companies:

• manage and improve data quality
• understand customers better
• improve marketing and operational decision-making
• predict customer behaviour and value.

📊 Where Sagacity Gets Their Data

Sagacity doesn’t typically collect raw personal data from scratch like a social network. Instead, they bring together data from multiple legal and licensed sources to build rich datasets and analytics. Key sources include:

✔ Client-Provided Data
Data organisations already hold (e.g., customer records, billing data, behavioural data).
Sagacity cleans, matches and enhances this with additional data to improve its value for analytics.

✔ Public & Official Data
Government statistical sources such as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and other official datasets.
International datasets from organisations like the IMF, World Bank, OECD & Eurostat for economic and demographic context.

✔ Licensed Third-Party Data
Permissioned datasets acquired from trusted partners, such as:
Major credit bureaus
Postal & address data (e.g., Royal Mail)
Consumer lifestyle and demographic data brokers
Demand and vacancy tracking sources (e.g., Burning Glass, ITJobsWatch)

✔ Proprietary Datasets
Through aggregation and legal combinations of sources (including licensed and purchased data), Sagacity builds proprietary datasets — for example:
Consumer attributes across millions of UK individuals
Property and household insights
Suppression files (e.g., movers, deceased records)
Linkage keys to unify data across systems

🧠 What They Use Data For
Sagacity’s data isn’t just stored — it’s analysed and modelled to help clients with:
Customer segmentation and targeting
Risk and credit assessment
Customer acquisition and retention
Billing accuracy and debt recovery
Predictive analytics and reporting tools

------
Excerpt from Google AI

Sagacity (specifically Sagacity Solutions Ltd) is a prominent data intelligence company founded in 2005 that specializes in cleaning, enhancing, and utilizing customer data to improve business performance, with a heavy focus on the utilities, financial services, and telecommunications sectors. They are known for processing massive volumes of data to identify "revenue leakage" (unbilled properties/customers) and optimize marketing and debt collection.
Here are the key details regarding Sagacity's role in the "big data" landscape:

    Scale of Operations: Sagacity processes over 140 million customer data records and 6 billion call detail records (CDRs) per month.
    Key Services:
        Data Cleaning & Matching: They specialize in merging siloed data, fixing inaccurate records, and cleaning data to provide a "single view" of the customer.
        Revenue Leakage Identification: They have identified over £258M in revenue leakage for clients over 12 years.
        Unbilled Property Detection: In just 12 months, they identified 50k+ unbilled properties for clients.
        Data-Driven Marketing: They provide psychographic profiling and behavioral segmentation by mapping data to open social media profiles to understand consumer motivations.

    High-Profile Clients: They work with major brands, including British Gas, AA, and Moonpig.
    Data Aggregation: Sagacity is considered a significant data broker and collector, which has led to their involvement in data-intensive campaigns, such as supporting the BBC with TV license compliance.
    Technology & Partnerships: They use proprietary data and technologies, including partnerships with platforms like Databricks for AI and hyper-personalization.

While sometimes characterized by the public as a "data broker", the company describes itself as a data consultancy that helps consumer-facing businesses increase engagement and revenue

[broadstairs]

That is interesting. I have not (yet) had anything like this but sounds like it may happen in future. If I did start to receive any I might consider a removal but I'd set up a specific email address  which was ONLY used to do this on their site and could therefore be tracked back to them if it gets exposed.

Stuart

[vic0239]

I received such a letter the other day and never gave it much thought, just put it straight into the shredding pile. My bank was not one of those listed in the letter, the only personal information was my name and address which is commonly traded despite always ticking the “no” to that box. Just the other day my wife received a stack of junk mail from various companies who she has never had dealings with, but suspects that a purchase from Hotter Shoes may be responsible as the frequency of junk mail started around that time.