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The most common source for the creation of junk mail lists is the edited electoral register. If you are registered to vote and you have not opted out of being on the edited version of the electoral register, your local council will sell your name and address details to anyone prepared to pay a small fee. This practice is likely to become illegal after the Information Commissioner recently concluded that selling the edited register is "an unsatisfactory way for local authorities to treat personal information".
The Information Commissioner recommended the abolishment of the register. However, it may take a while before this actually happens, so you might want to opt out of being on the register now. You can do so by contacting your local elections office at any time of the year.
The second major source for mailing lists are other firms. Companies happily sell their own mailing lists to other companies. For you as a consumer, this means that your personal details will go from company to company and that your personal details will end up on an ever increasing number of mailing lists.
In third place are companies that create and sell mailing lists themselves. The internet was first mentioned as a source for junk mail lists in 2005 and is likely to have become a much more used source in the last couple of years.
Stickingly, no less than 27 per cent of the companies that were asked about the origin of their mailing lists could not answer the question.