Moving home with pets

We've recently moved house, and have needed to do an outrageous number of address updates and things like banks, insurers, etc.

Pets like cats and dogs should be microchipped, so if they get lost someone can hopefully scan them, look up the pet on a database and contact the owner.  There are a number of database operators, and Echo (our cat) is registered with Identibase.  As far as I understand, these database operators get paid a fee at registration time which covers the cost of running the database for the life of the pet.  Identibase also offers a few subscription services for an annual fee, which I'm not really interested in.

What came as a surprise to me is that Identibase don't allow you to update any of your personal details, such as your address, unless you have subscribed to one of their additional services (for a fee).  This seems a bit outrageous - the whole point of these national databases is to accurately identify a pet's owner, and they are actively putting blocks in the way of keeping their database up to date.  Some Googling shows that other providers are also charging for address updates.

In the grand scheme of things, a few quid at a time when you're spending thousands to move house isn't a lot, but also: it's a few extra quid that you'd prefer not to spend, at a time when you've already spent thousands!

Luckily, this is where knowing your rights pays off: your address is your "personal data", and is therefore covered by the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act.  Article 16 of the UK GDPR provides data subjects (i.e. you) with a "right to rectification": if some of your personal data is inaccurate or out of date, you can tell the data controller (in this case, Identicare Limited) and, by law, they have to correct it.  What's more, Article 12(5) says they have to do this free of charge, and per Article 12(3), "without undue delay and in any event within one month".

So, I emailed their data protection officer (privacy@identibase.co.uk), asking for them to update my address, citing the above legislation.  I had already sent my request to their customer service address, which had been ignored, but it was actioned within a day of sending it to their privacy address.

The same legislation applies to all of the database operating companies, so there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to use this method to avoid the fees that any of them charge for personal data updates.