I maintain freethepostcode.org.

Our database stores your email address, the lat/long you submit, the postcode you submit, the date/time of submission, the confirmation string, and confirmed flag.

Only the lat/long/postcode is released publically. We store the email address of the submitter so that in the event of problems with a particular submitter, we have some hope of fixing problems.

So, donning my tinfoil hat for one second, the worst case scenario as far as privacy is concerned is that the few people who have access to the database at freethepostcode.org would be able to tell that I (or at least my iPhone) was at a particular point at a particular time. I think I can live with that.

One further question: how does one create a username and get listed here? Thanks in advance.

PS Just submitted my first three postcodes. )

iFreeThePostcode actually submits your data to freethepostcode.org – a website which I don’t actually have control over. I do trust the people looking after that site but as it’s not my own I can’t answer your questions definitively. I think these are correct though:

a) Your email address is stored together with the lat, lon and postcode that you submit. An IP address will also show up in the web server logs but I’m not sure if this is specifically stored and for how long.
b) The only information which is intended for release is the latitude and longitude and the postcode
c) Not entirely sure what the “ownership” would be but..
d) The information is already released under a public domain license, you can get it from freethepostcode.org (link is on the bottom of the page).

I believe the email address is stored basically as a way to tie a number of submissions together, so that if someone decided to systematically submit the entire royal mail database, it could be noticed and removed. There is absolutely no intention to use your email address for spam or to sell it.

If I’ve missed something obvious, please just post a link.

I don’t want to sound distrusting — ‘cos I’m not! — but I’d like to know exactly what I’m contributing to. Thanks in advance.

Their docs also mention that “the geocoding service may only be used in conjunction with displaying results on a Google map” which means that you couldn’t use it with a map from Open Street Map.

Also, even though you do get some free access to postcodes with Google’s API, the database is still proprietary, what if you don’t want to use Google’s API, what if you want to do something new and interesting that google’s API can’t do? The only way to do that would be to pay large amounts of money to the Royal Mail.

I just tried it then quickly, and it seems to accurately resolve a full postcode quite well.

Obviously, you’re not going to get incredibly accurate property boundaries or anything, but you’re not going to get that anyway with an iPhone app.

Probably a lot quicker than doing it by hand, though perhaps not strictly within the Google T’s&C’s (which I didn’t read).

Cheers!

James P.

As long as you’ve got some way to work back to a rough location (via OpenStreetMap or whatever) then it should provide a pretty good if slightly coarse source. In some cases it’s going to be misleading, e.g. very long roads, but then it should be pretty easy to spot very long roads in the OSM data, and even then it’d be better than nothing. In some cases it’ll be even more accurate than a single point, I know for example that in my small street every house has the same postcode.