Boring data, verified and current: identity, address, payments and meter readings, running through a standing credit pipe for the whole life of the account. “We never sell your data” arrives qualified, and vendors take slices for their own purposes.
A detailed picture of your home life. Worth keeping.
Account and consumption data is kept for years for billing and regulation.
Setup needs identity and address; ID documents are uncommon.
Industry profile reviewed 23 August 2026. Also machine-readable via the free API.
Utility records are how people get found: a name tied to a current address and a payment history. That pairing is where stalking and identity theft start, and it is exactly what these files hold.
Boring data, verified and current
A utility account binds verified identity, date of birth and bank details to a current address and a usage stream: how much you use, and when. It looks dull, but it is verified and current, exactly what identity databases and people-finding tools want.
Two pipes run the whole time
A two-way feed to credit and fraud agencies, plus profiles bought from data brokers and folded into your file. "We never sell your data" usually has exceptions for their own group and their own marketing, so both pipes keep running.
The usage stream is a record of when you are out
A meter that reports through the day rather than once a year shows when a home wakes up, when it empties, and when it is left standing for a week. Once that pattern is relabelled as de-identified, it sits outside every other promise in the notice, and the policies keep it.
Worked out from the industry, not from any one company. What you actually handed over is yours to record.
Built only from what this kind of service actually collects. A dimension that the data does not support is not listed.
Consumption reveals when you are home and awake.
Medical-equipment use shows in the load profile.
Two kinds of hold. LAW SETS IT: a statute makes them keep it. THEY SET IT: a ground the company grants itself.
Tax and company law makes them keep billing and payment records.
To flag suspected fraud, often on a shared industry database you cannot reach through the company.
They can keep records to defend a live or possible legal claim.
Utility and phone records covering hundreds of millions of people have been sold into identity tools used by police and investigators, and your payment record flows to credit bureaus by design. Some carriers say plainly that customer data trains their own AI.
Smart-meter consumption data is shared with third parties.
Consumption patterns train demand models.
Anonymised is their word. Pseudonymised smart-meter load profiles have been re-linked to the households that produced them (Jawurek, Johns and Rieck, 2011).
Fifteen demographic attributes re-identify 99.98% of Americans in a released dataset (Rocher, Hendrickx and de Montjoye, Nature Communications, 2019); date of birth, postcode, and sex alone did it for most people in the first study of the problem (Sweeney, 2000).
Four card transactions identify 90% of people in payment data (de Montjoye et al., Science, 2015).
THE STUDIES Estimating the success of re-identifications in incomplete datasets using generative models (Nature Communications 10, 3069, 2019)·Simple Demographics Often Identify People Uniquely (Carnegie Mellon University, Data Privacy Working Paper 3, 2000)·Unique in the shopping mall: On the reidentifiability of credit card metadata (Science 347 (6221), 2015)·Smart Metering De-Pseudonymization (Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, 2011)
Clauses that recur across this industry, and what each one actually permits.
“to provide and improve our services”
The catch-all purpose. Analytics, profiling, personalisation, and increasingly AI training can all ride under it. When they want to do something new with your data, this sentence usually already covers it.
THE MOVE An objection draws the line: use your data to run the service, not to improve, target, or train on it.
“we do not sell your personal information”
Often technically true, and still misleading. It usually means no cash changes hands. Data can still flow to ad networks, analytics firms, and partners: on their definition, sharing is not selling.
THE MOVE Flip the do-not-sell switch where one exists. The written objection on top of it goes on your record.
“service providers, partners, and affiliates”
How data leaves the building with no name attached. Recipients are listed by what they do, never who they are. You cannot send a request to a company you cannot name, which is the point.
THE MOVE An access request can ask for the recipients by name, not just the categories. UK and EU law put that choice with you. The reply, or the silence, goes on your record.
“aggregated or de-identified information”
Stripping the name does not strip the pattern, and the pattern often still points at you. Policies grant themselves free, indefinite use of this data because in their telling it is no longer about you.
THE MOVE If a deletion comes back as 'anonymised', keep the reply. It is their claim, not a fact you can check.
“retained as long as necessary, or as required by law”
They can keep it for: legal duties, tax rules, fraud prevention, possible lawsuits, their own business reasons. None of them carries a firm end date. Deletion becomes a negotiation, not an event.
THE MOVE Which reasons apply to you, and how long each runs, is a request of its own. Their reply goes on your record.
“you grant us a licence to use your content”
A contract term, not a data setting, so a privacy request cannot undo it. The careful version ends with your account. The broad version can be passed on, never expires, and survives deletion.
THE MOVE Whether the licence ends with the account is written in their terms, not yours. Closing the account goes on your record.
“credit reference and fraud prevention agencies, both when you sign up and routinely afterwards”
A standing two-way pipe for the life of the account. Missed payments change your credit file; fraud markers follow you across the industry.
THE MOVE Much of this pipe is in the contract, but an access request still covers what was reported about you, and to whom.
“we never sell your data to anyone outside our group for their own marketing use”
The exceptions do the work: sharing across the whole corporate group, passing your details to firms that buy debts, and using your data to aim their own ads.
THE MOVE An objection draws the line in writing: supply and billing, nothing else.
“in some circumstances these entities may use your information for their own legitimate business purposes”
The vendor stops working only to the utility's instructions and starts using your data for itself. From that point the promises in this notice no longer travel with it.
THE MOVE An access request covers which vendors received your data, and in the UK and EU they can be asked for by name. Their reply goes on your record.
Their own policy is the one that binds them. Pin it down with a request, and keep the reply. Start your record →