In what looks to be a massive invasion of privacy masquerading as a scientific test The whereabouts of more than 100,000 mobile phone users have been tracked in an attempt to build a comprehensive picture of human movements...
The new work tracked 100,000 individuals selected randomly from a sample of more than six million phone users in a European country.
Each time a participant made or received a call or text message, the location of the mobile base station relaying the data was recorded.
The researchers said they were "not at liberty" to disclose where the information had been collected and said steps had been taken to guarantee the participants' anonymity.
For example, individual phone numbers were disguised as 26 digit security codes.
"Furthermore, we only know the coordinates of the tower routing the communication, hence a user's location is not known within a tower's service area," they wrote.
Notice no one was asked if they wanted to participate in this, and I don't believe for a second that a) steps had been taken to guarantee the participants' anonymity and b) this test was just about tracking movements.
Read more here.
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