Why does the delivery driver need my personal details?

Online shopping has seen a huge rise in the amount of personal data required to receive our goods, allegedly in the name of “safety” and efficiency. I’ve never been asked to give the person who delivers my post a score by the Royal Mail but now delivery drivers (from Amazon, for example) expect you to “rate” them for the simple job of leaving a package where you requested.

Once the practice of “rating” was confined to Uber drivers, then Deliveroo employees… now, couriers and drivers stand outside our homes taking photos and then send a message with smiley photos and mini biographies (as in “Hi! I’m Mike and I like heavy metal and real ale”), as if we’re new best friends. It bothers me – will smiley Mike be sacked or demoted if I don’t award him and his pals five stars every time?

Some delivery services also require us to download their app even though we’ve ordered from a different company, handing over our email address and phone number and even our date of birth, all of which seems a gross intrusion. I might be paranoid but all this coincides with a huge rise in phone scams, from the fake Royal Mail/parcel scam doing the rounds, to the dodgy phone call requesting bank details from “HMRC”.

The other day I had to download an app to leave a tip for a pizza delivery operative, and was welcomed into a new “community” in the process. There’s a lot to be said for cash…