The register that gets sold
When you registered to vote, you were added to two lists, and only one of them is about voting.
The full electoral register is used for elections, credit checks, and some crime-prevention purposes. Access is restricted.
The open register can be bought by anyone and used for almost any purpose, including direct marketing and inclusion in people-search databases. If you have ever wondered how a directory site knows your address, this is very often the answer: you told your council, and your council's open register was sold, lawfully, to a republisher.
What can be found
An open-register entry ties your name to your current address. Combined with the dossier sites this series covers, it is the anchor record that lets a stranger's search move from "a name" to "a name at an address".
Take yourself off it
- Opt out of the open register. You can do this when you register to vote, or at any time through your local council — gov.uk's "opt out of the open register" page routes you to the right one. Opting out of the open register does not affect your right to vote. Credit reference agencies use the full electoral register, which the opt-out doesn't touch — so it doesn't affect your credit record either.
- Know what opting out doesn't do. It stops future sales of your entry. Copies already sold stay sold — which is why directory sites can still show an address you opted out years ago.
- Then work the republishers. Our free do-it-yourself guides for the UK directory sites walk through each site's own removal process, no account needed.
What this doesn't fix
- Copies sold before you opted out — those need per-site removal, and a site working from an old copy may still hold you even after a site that re-buys the register each year has dropped you.
- Your entry on the full register, which is not for sale but does exist.
- Address sources that never came from the register at all — the rest of this series covers those.
Our free scan checks the UK directory sites our scanner reads against your name. The scan takes under a minute, no account. See what's exposed.
Part of Hard to Find — the free course in what the internet holds about you.