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Comment by tombrossman | Hacker News Reader

Reminder, Amazon's UK site already reports your purchases of many electronics to a police database. There is no opt-out. You could argue that this makes sense for mobile phones, but they do it for many other things, too. Here's a completely ordinary television that gets you listed in yet another police database: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B015EL27TQ/

In fairness, they do disclose this up front. "Please note that devices dispatched from and sold by Amazon are automatically registered on CheckMend and the National Mobile Property Register (NMPR), this information is shared in accordance with the Amazon.co.uk Privacy Notice"

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For phones, its so your phone can be locked when stolen. For TV, it is to ensure everyone pays the TV license to fund the BBC.

Both, IMHO, are good things. My phone was stolen, I don't want the lovely person to financially benefit. Also I like everyone to pay for the BBC heck but I am a socialist.

I know a few people who got their property back because of the registry sometimes laughably years down the line when it was already useless.

The TV license is nearly impossible to get rid off these because you also need to prove you don’t or can’t use bbc iplayer or consume any other publicly funded content online.

Is this the norm for online retailers in the UK, or is it exceptional?

I'm not sure. Two other popular online retailers here, Argos and John Lewis, do not have the same notice on their website when you select a TV and view the product page. It may be a law that they don't bother mentioning but that's just a guess.

I worked at Tesco ten years ago, and whenever someone bought a TV in store, we were promoted on the checkout to enter their house number and postcode. I was told it was for TV Licensing.

There is law that TV licensing get told your address every time a TV is sold[0], which Argos etc will also do. That is entirely separate from NMPR and CheckMend, which I hadn't heard of before. So seems to be an Amazon initiative.

[0] Actually anything able to receive TV, so covered video recorders etc too. Not sure how far it has been dragged into the internet age.

I was going to say similar about the requirement to provide the purchasers name and address for TV Licensing, but I just searched for details on when it started - certainly we had to do it back in the early '80s, and discovered that it's no longer the case; "this requirement has been lifted by the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill passed in 2013".

Interesting. Didn't know that had changed.

Curries registers for sure I’m also pretty sure that all the others do.

Insurance companies also require you to register any qualified property with the police if you get the contents of your home insured.

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