HMRC (aka the taxman/woman) is the organisation that collects tax to pay for schools and hospitals.  They therefore have access to some pretty personal information about all of us - how much we earn, what savings we have and other very intimate details.

They are now actively considering a plan (1) to sell our financial data to private companies and I am starting this petition to ask "Mr and Mrs Taxman, please don't sell our private financial details to companies".

Why am I worried - surely this data will be anonymous?

Unfortunately, researchers have shown that it is possible to identify individuals - even when they are part of a large database (2).  In other words, we would not necessarily be anonymous.

If this plan goes ahead, it could be perfectly doable for a private company soon to be able to say:

"hmmm, I see this man/woman, has limited savings, a long term health problem and a small salary - not sure we can offer them our product/service"

The taxman/woman does valuable work collecting money to pay for schools and hospitals.  Join this petition and ask them not to sell our private financial data to companies.

Day three **** nearly 3000 people now support the campaign and lots of organisations, bloggers and individuals starting to get on board. If you want to help me with this, I would LOVE any help. @civility1 is best way to get in touch. ***

Day 1 *** As I am just one guy, I have now teamed up with digital rights campaigning organisation, Open Rights Group and in one day nearly 1,000 people have said "we don't want the HMRC to sell our tax data across this petition and the one on their site *****

NOTES

(1) http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/18/hmrc-to-sell-taxpayers-data

(2) Here is an example of the sort of thing that can be done - http://33bits.org/about/netflix-paper-home-page/