Ticket for Neutral Fan needed for Sunday

I wasn’t going to reply to this thread, but it did strike me as strange that someone’s first posts on the site should be to warn off a moderator about legalities (incorrectly) and then call a long-standing member of the board a “moron”.

I will however reply, but hope this is the end of the discussion.

The DPA exists to prevent unwanted marketing and personal intrusion. In this case a poster was accused of not being who he claimed to be. I showed that he certainly was not posting from the Midlands as was claimed.

The Information Commissioner has ruled that IP addresses do not constitute personal information within the scope of the act, and therefore general information sourced from them ie approximate location (we are not talking address here, we are talking “Merseyside”) is within the law. How else do you get adverts that state “Hot dates in St Helens” – or is that just me? :blush:

As for going further. The OP (who has quite happily accepted I think that I am trying to help him – whether succesfully or not) provided even a moniker that can be Googled along with the word Everton to see if he appears on other sites related to Everton. He does.

There is no way I can confirm that the IP address and the stated identity match. All I can do is tell people that on balance I believe he is genuine – as equally I would warn people off if a really good Latics-related offer (maybe tickets, maybe merchandise) appeared which I could identify as coming from China or Russia.

We certainly cannot be bothered be doing this for all posters. Why would we? But in this case he was being accused of being a Villa fan. He isn’t.

Everything I posted is completely within the scope of the DPA. I won’t say why (because of DPA, you know), but I do know what I’m talking about.