In September 1995, Privacy International Director General Simon Davies investigated Mondex's claims that their digital cash service was "anonymous". Davies determined that, contrary to Mondex's public statements, in fact that the system was not anonymous and that the bank and merchants counld find out the identity of the users.
Davies filed a Fair Trading Act complaint against Mondex for falsely advertising the service as anonymous. In June 1996, the Fair Trading Office responded noting that:
It appears the customer is identified to the trader, as in paragraph seven above and, ultimately, the bank, by the 300 previous transactions. Each of these will soon be superseded by further transactions and drop off the end of the
list. These can be monitored by the bank and could be used for marketing purposes. This is the audit trail and ultimately could be sold to business users for third party marketing.
The office also noted that Mondex changed its literature and no longer claims that it was anonymous. The Office declined to press the issue further stating the online press releases were not covered by the act..
