So I've been having this discussion with the subscription department at Computing magazine for the past few weeks. It's a free, controlled-circulation magazine about - you're ahead of me here, I can tell - computing. They sent me an invitation to renew my subscription and off I went to their website, answering their questions about what I do for a living, how many computers I work with, that sort of thing.
And then came to a section which asked how many children I have? and whether I've ever been divorced or not? That sort of stuff which I'm happy to tell more or less anyone - none and no, in that order - but which didn't seem awfully relevant to me to reading about computers.
So I wrote to them saying:
Dear Colin (Barker, their editor whom I know vaguely)
I quite enjoy Computing but won't be renewing. When I followed through the link to the registration site it's asking for some personal information like my marital status, number of children and so on which I find pretty irrelevant to reading a computer magazine. So, thanks for the copies in the past and good luck in the future.
Dear Mr Ward-Johnson,
Thank you for your recent email regarding the registration process for Computing. As with all the questions we ask in the registration process the reasons are to ensure we can continue to deliver products and services on a free of charge basis. The information you provide allows our editorial team to continue to deliver a publication that is of interest to its readership and enables our sales teams to approach the right advertisers for the audience we have.
Both of these factors ensure that revenue is generated which allows you to receive the magazine free of charge. Should you not wish to disclose such personal information you can select the "confidential" option with two of the questions.
Both the dates of birth and home address information are collected for security reasons. Should you need to contact us to update any part of your reader profile we will use this information as basic security to ensure no one else can access your details.
The data protection questions we currently ask have been designed to ensure that, outside the products and services you receive and contact regarding those, you can select the level of future communication from 3rd parties and us. These questions are of a higher standard than currently requested from the data protection act to ensure you have complete control of your information.
I hope this answers your question and that you will complete the registration process. Should you have any further comments please do not hesitate to contact us.
Which doesn't explain why you want to know my marital status. Ask about my professional life, sure, even my DoB to make sure I'm old enough to know how to read. But why do you need to know if I'm married?