Relevant guidance on this comes from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)

  1. Target Intelligence is (of course) registered with ICO (Information Commissioner's Office). In addition some Target Intelligence staff personally carry MoD Security Clearance.
  2. We specifically asked ICO (in enquiry #0674614) whether Postcode is considered PII (Personally Identifiable Information). The ICO directed us to their guidance (What is personal data?) - The guidance is that Postcode will only count as PII if combined with other information which is 'in the possession of, or is likely to come into the possession of, the data controller' to identify a living individual. That is why Postcode probably counts as PII for you internally.
  3. In order for data mining to combine, say, your redacted sales history data with our extensive database of thousands of statistics per Postcode, we need the customer Postcode, but no other data relating to name, address, email, phone and similar. We do not acquire, process or store personal data so, for us, Postcode does NOT constitute PII because we have no other information with which to combine it in order to identify a living individual.

The practical outcome of this is that we can provide a service that companies struggle to carry out because of the need to comply with a strict interpretation of the ICO guidance on the handling of PII. In addition, if you are struggling to prepare the data then we can carry out a short engagement (as a temporary contract employment and with the protection of MoD Security Clearance) to prepare the data, redacting all PII, so that only Postcode and relevant product sale information is provided to Target Intelligence for our data mining to give you insights that you cannot otherwise obtain.