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UK's 4G Network Selling Subscriber Tracking Data To Police, Private Parties
Sockatume writes "The Sunday Times has revealed that analytics firm Ipsos MORI and 4G network EE attempted to sell detailed information on 27m subscribers' activities to various parties including the UK's police forces. The data encompasses the gender, postcode and age of subscribers, the sites they visit and times they are visited, and the places and times of calls and text messages. Ipsos MORI were reportedly 'bragging that the data can be used to track people and their location in real time to within 100 meters' in negotiations. Ipsos MORI has rushed to contradict this in an effort to save face, stating that the users are anonymized and data is aggregated into groups of 50 or more, while location is only precise to 700m. Despite their prior enthusiasm, the police have indicated that they will no longer go ahead with the deal. It is not clear whether the other sales will go ahead."
Oh man, private parties! I'm never invited to those!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm more worried that they're *paying* for it. With taxpayer money.
Who worked out that little deal?
yeah.. if they had a legal use case, they could just ask for the data.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
That and I'm not overly convinced it's legal in itself to do it this way.
If they're genuinely conveying things like gender, postcode and age then that unambiguously falls under what is deemed personal data. To pass such personal data on is a very clear breach of the data protection act and even the police don't have immunity from the data protection act, only exemptions.
This implies that Ipsos Mori, EE, and the Police were conspiring to break the law in carrying out an illegal transfer of personal data.
The only way this could be legal is if each and every subscriber has explicitly opted in to allowing their data to be sold on to 3rd parties.
Still, I'm not surprised by Ipsos Mori at least, this is the same company that offers statistical polls to show whatever you pay them to show. Want your political party to look like it's more popular than it is in the opinion polls? Just pay us, and we'll engineer a poll to show exactly that!
It's always humorous around election time and so forth when you have a poll sponsored by a right wing paper showing the right wing party in the lead and a poll sponsored by a left wing paper showing the left wing party in the lead and then you notice they're both from the same pollster, like Ipsos Mori. Most statisticians learn to beware and try and mitigate selection bias when doing statistical studies, Ipsos Mori make a profit off of it.
Seriously, there are legal methods of tracking people, and privacy protections for a reason. Throwing them all away for the guise of 'safety' NEVER works.
Would you like to be 'followed' because of a political or religious belief of yours, or your skin color, or sexual orientation? Open up for one, open up for all.
All you do is lose rights and privacy. You may gain a sense of safety, but not real safety.
Silence is a state of mime.
Try reading your service agreement sometime...
No sig today...
Try reading EU data protection laws sometime, we cant sign away our rights here.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Actually, given that you could extrapolate most people's identities from the data mentioned (postcode, gender and age), this sale would be illegal under EU data protection laws.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Who's to say AT&T isn't doing this already in USA?
Verizon is already doing this, and has been for a while, according to
PC World's article about this
Verizon to Share User Location Data, Browsing History With Marketers
Verizon has posted changes to its privacy policy stating that it will now share user location data, Web browsing history and demographic information with marketers.
While Verizon insists that it will not provide third parties with any information identifying users on a personal basis, it will give them a wide array of its users' information, including websites they frequent on their Verizon devices, places where their devices have been, and demographic categories such as gender and age range. Verizon will also share user interests with marketers, such as whether they're a sports fan, own a pet or what sort of restaurants they frequent.
The Department of Justice in the USA already wants carriers to keep user location data for further review by DOJ as needed, warranted or not.
Apple already got slogged for tracking user location data in articles and on South Park's "Human Centipad" episode, if you remember that. And that was followed by Android having to deal with user location tracking issues in May of 2011.
All of this just by searching for [ +"user location data" ] on your favorite search engine! So why aren't people up in arms about this?? Oh yeah, because not only do they accept this voluntarily, they pay the damn phone companies a monthly allotment to take their personal data and sell it! Damn sheep!
At the risk of of some kind of CONSPIRACY THEORIST - pah! (aka fucking lunatic) - I say this with every fibre of my being - FUCK THE FUCKING SYSTEM! - we are all thinking it but no-one will say it.. so I will FUCK IT, FUCK EVERYONE WHO IS ON BOARD, FUCK YOU, AND FUCK YOUR FUCKING COWARD FACE! FUCK EVERYONE WHO IS A BAD PERSON, FUCK THE CONSERVATIVES, FUCK THE MEDIA, FUCK THE MURDERING BASTARD CORPORATIONS, FUCK THE CORPORATIONS WHO SELL YOUR SOUL FOR A BUCK, FUCK IGNORANT ASSHOLE PEOPLE, FUCK RACISTS, FUCK EVERYONE! Every single one of you deserve your fate - every single one.
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." -- Benito Mussolini
Enjoy your fucking iPad - asshole.