Monday, January 31, 2005
My house is online, and I don't like it
The UK Land Registry is now serving up details of land registrations, including plot layouts, as well as pricing information, for £2 each. This means that you can find out how much your neighbours paid for their house, and exactly where their boundaries are.
This information has always been available through more traditional means from the Land Registry, and is accessed every time a house is bought or sold. But putting it online and making it cheap to access encourages more casual use of this information, and I for one don't like it. I don't have any particularly delicate financial concerns that I need to keep private, but I just don't like the thought of anyone being able to find out how much I paid for my house and what rights I have over my driveway.
The internet can open up new ways to access important and useful information, but just because we can do this that's not to say that we should.
The UK Land Registry is now serving up details of land registrations, including plot layouts, as well as pricing information, for £2 each. This means that you can find out how much your neighbours paid for their house, and exactly where their boundaries are.
This information has always been available through more traditional means from the Land Registry, and is accessed every time a house is bought or sold. But putting it online and making it cheap to access encourages more casual use of this information, and I for one don't like it. I don't have any particularly delicate financial concerns that I need to keep private, but I just don't like the thought of anyone being able to find out how much I paid for my house and what rights I have over my driveway.
The internet can open up new ways to access important and useful information, but just because we can do this that's not to say that we should.
Comments:
In a similar vein, I've always been baffled as to why your full name, full postal address and telephone number is published for all to see when you register a domain name (the details can be seen by doing a simple WHOIS search).
However, Nominet (the UK internet names organisation) lets UK residents opt-out of having their personal details published if are "non-trading individuals" (only your name appears in the WHOIS serach). This only applies if you register a UK domain name (for example, .co.uk, .org.uk). Other domain names are not covered by the opt-out option (.com, .net etc) because I believe they're outside Nominet's jusisdiction.
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However, Nominet (the UK internet names organisation) lets UK residents opt-out of having their personal details published if are "non-trading individuals" (only your name appears in the WHOIS serach). This only applies if you register a UK domain name (for example, .co.uk, .org.uk). Other domain names are not covered by the opt-out option (.com, .net etc) because I believe they're outside Nominet's jusisdiction.
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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