Say a little prayer

I’ve been sitting on this for a while, but today is as good a day as any to tell you about The Prayers.

A while back, someone asked me about an FOI request they’d received from an organisation called ‘The Prayers’. It was a type of request I’d seen many times before – they were trawling for information about people who had died without a will. Organisations sometimes known as ‘heir hunters’ identify estates with something to pass on and then locate the closest surviving relative. They often work on a ‘contingency basis’, meaning that they get a cut of the inheritance if they find the right person.

It was when I looked at the organisation’s website that I found something new. Rather than pitching themselves as probate researchers, they claimed to be a not-for-profit devoted to saying prayers for the dead and, crucially, the dying. They solicited the details of people both alive and dead.

Even stranger was the fact that The Prayers had a scrolling list of dozens of councils on their site, using their logos and describing them as ‘Partners’ and on one page as ‘Collaborators’.

I can't say for certain what The Prayers were doing, but I was worried that the website was obtaining data under false pretences, pretending to be saying prayers but actually – as their FOI request showed – trawling for deceased person to investigate. I was particularly vexed by the idea that they were asking people to submit personal data about people who were still alive. And as someone with a lot of residual loyalty to local government, I was annoyed that councils were being linked to this, almost certainly dishonestly.

I didn’t know what to do – The Prayers had an anonymous address in London, but no other sign of a legal identity. Their website explicitly said that they weren’t a charity.

Then I had an idea. I made what is often called a ‘round robin’ FOI request to all the councils whose logo was on the site, asking them what their relationship with The Prayers was. I had two objectives. First, I was almost certain they’d all tell me that they didn’t have anything to do with The Prayers, but if any of them were in some way connected, I wanted to know why.

Every single response confirmed that The Prayers’ claim of partnership or collaboration was false.

The second objective was a bit more wayward, but it paid off. I wanted to tell all of these councils that this outfit was claiming a connection with them and using their logo. I guessed that FOI officers – generally a resourceful and sensible bunch – would realise that the claims made by The Prayers needed to be tackled, and many of them did.

While some councils responded to me neutrally (no shade, that’s all that FOI requires), others explicitly thanked me for letting them know and confirmed that they would be contacting The Prayers forthwith.

I have to assume that whoever is behind ‘The Prayers’ didn’t like all the attention as multiple councils got in touch with them. They first made some cosmetic changes to their website and then killed it altogether. If you go to theprayers DOT co DOT uk, it’s no longer there.

I have no evidence of fraud or criminality. But it is my honest opinion that if anyone submitted data about a living person to the people running The Prayers, they obtained that personal data unfairly and unlawfully, failing to be transparent about the purpose for which that data would be used. I can't prove that, but the operators of The Prayers are free to comment on why their FOI requests seem at odds with their website.

I could have complained about The Prayers to the Information Commissioner's Office, but the UK’s data protection regulator makes it almost impossible for a well-meaning citizen to tip them off about possibly nefarious uses of data, a historic problem that can’t even be blamed on John Edwards. And they don’t really investigate data protection breaches any more and in future, hope to file as many complaints as they can with no further action, a problem for which John Edwards is entirely responsible.

So I decided to take matters into my own / the councils' hands, and I think we can chalk this up as a win.

The people running The Prayers are still out there. I fear this episode will not deter them from obtaining data in questionable circumstances in future. So if you see them emerge in some other form, pretending to be whatever they think of next, let me know. Anything you tell me will never trace back to you.

And if you're whoever ran The Prayers, I look forward to finding out who you are.