Cell Phone Tracking Reveals Users' Habits 180
DinkyDogg writes "'New research that makes creative use of sensitive location-tracking data from 100,000 cellphones in Europe suggests that most people can be found in one of just a few locations at any time, and that they do not generally go far from home.' More interesting than their conclusion, however, is how they got their data. 'The researchers said they used the potentially controversial data only after any information that could identify individuals had been scrambled. Even so, they wrote, people's wanderings are so subject to routine that by using the patterns of movement that emerged from the research, "we can obtain the likelihood of finding a user in any location." The researchers were able to obtain the data from a European provider of cellphone service that was obligated to collect the information. By agreement with the company, the researchers did not disclose the country where the provider operates.' Any guesses which European country requires cell phone providers to record where their customers make calls, and then allows them to give that data away without disclosing that they have done so?"
Well, there goes the myth of the EU saner than U.S (Score:3, Interesting)
well.. im not going to feel vindicated or anything, the implications are that orwell is rolling over in his grave fast enough to generate free energy for the entire planet if you were to assemble a turbine around him.
so now they know what youre saying, or browsing on the web, and are able to watch you marked on a map as you move from one place to another.
so, when are you voting out the people who did this? at least most western nations outside the US have more choices than tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum
Odd conclusion (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not necessarily the type of data they collected.
Here in Europe, in some countries, cell phone companies offer a service that can reveal a phone's location (with the precision of a fraction of a kilometer/mile) at any given time from any place actually. It's useful for tracking your phone when it gets stolen, or spying on your spouses.
However, the owner of the phone must consent to this service. Any tracking (except maybe for aid in criminal investigations?) without the owner's consent would be very illegal. And I suspect what happened here, is the company collected data of such consenting owners.
Whether they consented to having their data used in research, well, that's another matter.
Re:legal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Data has not been anonymized (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Germany! (Score:5, Interesting)
The country is definitely Germany. You can get the publication in question from the authors homepage [nd.edu] Then take figure 1a (as suggested in hweimer's [slashdot.org] blog [quantenblog.net]) and lay it over some google map, appropriately scaled.
The data is definitely centered around Germany, but tracks reach to Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland and Cech Republic...
Re:Some countries use it to track traffic jams (Score:4, Interesting)
As for anonmyization, you may be able to track individual users, but if you have scrambled the locations so they are no longer meaningful (ie. they do not represent any real coordinate system) I guess it would be pretty difficult to unpick it. That is the x,y location information is arbitrary coordinates and not the lat/long or whatever local grid is in use.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is that really so surprising? (Score:2, Interesting)
Tomorrow I will make sure to let her lead, and we will see how that goes. Maybe she does have a particular path that she feels is 'right' and I just don't know it.
Tin-foil hat time! (Score:3, Interesting)
It's funny to watch headlines attempt to troll out tin-foil hat crowd. This data seems much more useful for the development of cities than it would for evil advertisers or jack-boot government thugs who can find you through any number of measures and come get you whenever they feel like it.
Personally, I don't care much about folks knowing my routine. Wow, I go to work, come home, go shopping, go for a walk, and head off to the same few places every weekend. If data for a better mass-transit system or better roads was to result, that'd be great.
Re:New Physics (Score:3, Interesting)
It's called MultiSIM. Same phone number can be used on multiple phones.
Though I'm not sure how GSM network would react if I cloned IMEI address of two phones to identical and used multisim with them.
Re:Pretty sure it must be the Netherlands (Score:4, Interesting)
And then we have NSA, CIA, DHS... Do you believe they will provide any kind of statistics? It's all about deniability.
And of course - there is a rule of evidence in the US, this means that illegally acquired evidence can't be used. So that in turn means that "anonymous tip" can be an acronym for wiretapping, which in turn can lead to other means of surveillance and evidence gathering. To add to this it's possible to do a setup to obtain plausible deniability. Why do you think that the US have so many different agencies that overlaps?
Anonymnous #45 spends every nite at 45 Lexington (Score:3, Interesting)
Anonymous 1: Arrives at 10 downing st. every evening at 21:00, and goes to work at 08:00
Anonymous 2: Arrives at Buckingham every nite at 23:00, but sneaks out at 01:00 and goes to the big oak tree in Hyde park.
Anynomous 31415: Sneaks out from 45 Lexington in Soho, and goes the the big oak tree in Hyde park.
Is your cell phone location a business record? (Score:2, Interesting)
Note that all US mobile carriers are required to track or have the ability to track phone location to comply with the 911 laws.
Key issue in the US is whether cell phone location falls under "common carrier" or "business record" legal status. If it is covered by "common carrier", then like the contents of your conversation, you have an expectation of privacy, police need a warrant to obtain the information and the cell phone company can not sell or use the information for other purposes.
If phone location is regarded as a "business record" you don't have any of those protections. Many of the fancy personalized advertising models depend on the phone companies ability to "publish" your location. Billions of dollars in potential profit are at stake here so do not make assumptions, but the potential for abuse is enormous.
Tracking cell phones (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pretty sure it must be the Netherlands (Score:2, Interesting)