More Suspect than a 1970's TV Presenter

You know those millions of automated, badly spelled, emails and texts your parents get from the school? Have you ever wondered about how much they cost the school? Have you ever wanted to know what happens to that sensitive information you hand over to Hampstead School?

The school doesn't actually run its own communication infrastructure; they're too thick to be able to do that (knowing their track record, we're surprised they can tie their own shoelaces). Instead, they contract it out to a company under the name of Keep Kids Safe. And the address of a company called Keep Kids Safe? 1 Yewtree Avenue (we kid you not).

According to Savile Ltd. Keep Kids Safe's schools brochure, they charge 6p per text to a mobile. Seemingly nothing, until you multiply that by the 1,300 students at Hampstead. Every one of those texts costs the school at least £78 to send, and could be more, as some students have more than one parent's mobile number on the system. Now, since the school have sent an estimated 30 of these texts in the last year, the cost in one year alone has reached £2,340.

According to their brochure, their system is easily implemented, and one of their processes of transfer is something called a "mail merge". Now, what does that remind us of? Oh yeah... Despite residing over the school's communication system during the time in which the school leaked their own records of the personal data of over 400 students and respective parents, their websites claims: "we have considerable experience handling sensitive and confidential information".

Keep Kids Safe is actually a part of an umbrella company by the name of CMM Technology Ltd, which is, would you believe it, a registered company with the Information Commissioner's Office. We thought we would have a look at their entry in the ICO's database, and found that despite processing "sensitive classes of information that may include physical or mental health details; racial or ethnic origin; religious or other beliefs", they share their information with, but not limited to, "suppliers and service providers", "financial organisations" and "employment and recruitment agencies" as well as on occasion having to "transfer personal information overseas".

So, the next time you are updating your information for the school system, you can wonder yourself silly as to where that information will end up, how safe it is, and how much it is costing the school for their privilege.