Post office slammed for sharing data

Austria's national post office has found itself under fire for collecting and selling information about customers' political allegiances in what privacy campaigners say bears similarities to the Facebook data-sharing scandal. Austrian Post sold the names, addresses, age and gender of about 3m customers to other companies for targeted marketing purposes. A BusinessLIVE report notes that it also makes assumptions about users' likely political allegiances, compiling up to 2.2m such profiles. That information is sold on to political parties so that they can better target potential supporters in election campaigns.