BBC Crowdsources 3G Coverage Map

judgecorp writes "The BBC is asking Android users to install an app which will upload information about 3G and 2G coverage, in order to build up a map showing where Britain has signal. The company behind the app, Epitiro, previously worked with the regulator Ofcom to measure 3G speed, and apparently found that O2 is slightly faster."

Comments

Re:If this was in the US...

[Spad]

If they tried to do anything untoward with the data they collected, without your explicit permission, the ICO would likely hit them with rather substantial fines (I believe the current cap is £500,000 per infringement), so I wouldn't be too concerned about it. Especially when you consider that the same could be said for *any* application that has access to GPS on your phone.

Re:If this was in the US...

[digitig]

Hacking a dead girls voicemail, deleting potential evidence from the mailbox and giving false hope to here parents isn't quite the same as someone tracking you walking past the local porn shop

FTFY. It was even worse than you suggested, not to mention the alleged police bribery.

The trouble is, Rebekah Brooks indicated that The Sun would be moving to 7-day working before the shit hit the fan, so it's quite possible that they were going to close the News of the World anyway and the closure has nothing to do with the wrongdoing, it was just a convenient scrap to throw to the attack dogs.

Dutch consumer foundation is doing the same thing

[dingen]

I wonder if this has something to do with what the Consumentenbond (very large & influential Dutch consumer foundation) is doing on their website slechtedekking.nl (translates as "badcoverage.nl"). They've recently launched exactly the same thing as the BBC: an Android app which tracks cellular reception for both telephone (signal strength) and data (ping and bandwith) and lets you automatically or manually upload the data to the website.