A Nice Little Earner For Barclays

Barclays has decided to start selling on data from its customers to other companies.

The Telegraph reports that Barclays has told savers that it intends to package together "information about the transactions on your account" with data on groups of other customers to compile reports on spending trends across Britain. This could then be passed on other companies or Government departments.

In addition to these changes, which will take effect in the autumn, Barclays will also start tracking customers through their mobile phones or other "devices" allegedly to help protect them from fraud. If a payment is made in a certain country, Barclays will "ping" the customer's mobile number to check if the phone is in that country.

Barclays claims that any customer data it sells would never be sold on in such a way that an individual customers was "identifiable".

Everyone happy with this?

If not, aside from closing your account, there's not much you can do about it; as Barclays is only allowing you to opt out of having your mobile tracked.