I can respect the arguments for making it public but there are strong arguments also to raise a high barrier of entry to discourage abuse. Further, the fewer users of the list, they easier they are to police.
Well, in Italy postcodes define city areas, and cities, for example for my city the main postcode is 80100, but my area is 80142, and it contains few buildings, so it's different from UK, UK was the first time I saw such specific postcodes, and I've lived also in Germany and Netherlands
Many buildings also have their own postcode!
(The second half of the postcode represents the 'delivery point' which is basically limited by the amount of post that the postman/woman can physically carry...)
If it's an issue that someone would know your address, then it's an issue that they would know your postcode.
If it's an issue that someone would know your postcode, then it's an issue that they would know your address.
I'm struggling to think of a scenario where you'd be fine with someone knowing one of those pieces of information without knowing the other.
It's not therefore an issue that there's a lookup between the two. Indeed you can do it trivially with google maps, or the plenty of other services that expose this database through their operation.
Any safety concerns aren't at the layer of translation between postcode and address, they're how someone tied either of those pieces of information to a given person.
> Would open address data create privacy risks?
No. Unlike opening up more sensitive datasets such as personal location, releasing address data - a list of the physical places recognised by the government - carries few new legal or ethical risks. Many other countries are doing this, including those with strong privacy regimes. Open address data could only create new risks if it were linked and used with other datasets, and these risks should be managed in that context. The harms created by the lack of access to address data are more pressing.
How exactly would that be abused? Denmark have a website where you can enter any address, or an address close to where you want to be and then let you select the right house on a map. The same site will show you the owners, the purchase price the taxable value, size, number of bathrooms, stuff like that. I used it to find the address of a friend when I needed to ship him a present and I only roughly knew where he lives.
What nonsense. Are you worried about physical spam mail? That ship has already sailed. I genuinely can’t think of any other abuse vector for a dataset like this.
I don’t believe it’s ever been accessible for free. It’s just that ownership has moved from the state to a private company and now it’s difficult to make it open.
