A third of Brits are unwilling to trust any third party with their personal data.

According to a Pitney Bowes research project, 31 per cent don't want to share personal data, such as age and address, with a third party and just 36 per cent would trust a bank in this area.

In an effort to create and successfully market more personalised products and services many organisations may have over-stepped the mark, leading to a lack of consumer trust. Pitney Bowes’ marketing director, Phil Hutchison, comments: “Statistics show that even the most basic form of personalisation substantially increases response rates, it’s not surprising that marketers are hungry for more and more personal data. There is an opportunity, but only for those companies which get communication right.”

Banks are the second most trusted organisation, behind doctors on 42 per cent. Consumers have marginally more trust in Government than online retailers (30 per cent and 27 per cent respectively) and the least trusted are fitness centres (13 per cent). Retail loyalty programmes garner little trust as well with a mere 15 per cent.

The survey shows there is a clear line between what is seen as personal data and what is ‘private information’. It is the minority of respondents who are unwilling to give basic transactional data details, such as date of birth (10 per cent), postal address (13 per cent) or email (14 per cent). However, the trust line is crossed when it comes to private issues such as sexual preference, (45 per cent) religion (71 per cent) or political persuasion (76 per cent).

“Customers are likely to be wary of agreeing to information requests that they don’t understand. If a retail loyalty scheme starts asking you for your height and weight, or a bank asks about your family structure you can only wonder why!” says Hutchison.

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