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UK postcode database leaks online

By Barry Collins

Posted on 16 Sep 2009 at 13:50

A database claiming to contain all of the UK's 1.8m postcodes - and their precise geographical location - has been leaked online.

The infamous Wikileaks site has published the database, which it claims was updated as recently as 8 July.

The information is stored as a plain text file that includes comma separated data such as grid references, wards and NHS region.

The Royal Mail has long rebuffed calls from freedom of information campaigners to make the full postcode database freely available. It made £1.6m from licensing the database in 2007, according to a report in The Guardian.

Campaigners argue the database should be made freely available to encourage businesses to develop services around the data, which has been compiled at the taxpayers' expense. Now it appears Wikileaks may have done the job for them, although it's far from clear what the legal implications of using such data would be.

A spokesperson for the Royal Mail said the database is "similar to something we provide" and that the company is "looking into it".

The Wikileaks postcode database can be found here.

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User comments

Hi,

We work with uk postcode data quite a bit and so know something of the licensing.

As we understand it, the user never owns the data, they only ever license the rights to use it within terms for a given period of time.

Whoever put the data online has done the equivalent of putting a video on a pirate site.

Even if you access this data and download it, you are using it illegally unless licensed.

For the same reason, it wouldn't be legal to pay someone to record the results that come out of one of the thousands of sites producing possible addresses from a postcode search.

By andy_comment on 16 Sep 2009

Oh the Irony!

If you download data about the taxpayer, paid for by the taxpayer, a private company that didn't pay anything for it and has a monopoly on that data, can sue you because you didn't get a license from them!

Does anyone else think this is insane?
This data should have been made public domain from the day Royal Mail was privatised.

By cheysuli on 16 Sep 2009

David

Who cares. I've downloaded it and will be using in my web applications. Thank you very much!

By lemonlainey on 16 Sep 2009

Million or Billion

Judging by the price I pay to license this every year, I think the Post Office would have made more than 1.6 million in 2007.

By iwilson on 16 Sep 2009

So, all we need now is the list of street address that go with the postcode and we're done.. Goodbye to useless Royal Mail. Talking of which, where's my post you little b***ds!

By lemonlainey on 16 Sep 2009

Icing on the cake

Hey cheysuli, just to wind you up a little bit more you're other Guardian readers' favourite the Ordnance Survey provide the co-ordinates and it's actually their product that's been uploaded.

By andy_comment on 17 Sep 2009