Date Published: 18/11/2019
ARCHIVED - Controversy as the Spanish government tracks the movements of 43 million mobile phone owners
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
A survey is being performed to study habitual and holiday journeys throughout Spain
The Spanish government’s central statistics unit begins a controversial piece of research on Monday, tracking the movements of around 43 million mobile phones across the country in order to obtain information regarding their owners’ movements, not in specific individual terms but in reference to the population in general.
The three largest mobile phone suppliers in Spain, Movistar, Vodafone and Orange, have all agreed to supply data (excluding identification and personal details) for a period of four days, although the latter two are also offering their customers the opportunity to “opt out” of the survey if they wish. This first phase of the research will enable the statistics office to compile information on where people travel among 3,200 areas into which the country has been divided for the purposes of the investigation, each of these zones being home to around 15,000 people.
It is being stressed that throughout the data collection period phone users are being completely guaranteed their anonymity, but needless to say the campaign has caused serious concerns over data privacy in many quarters. For this reason it is important to stress that users can be excluded from the survey as follows:
Vodafone: via the “Mi Vodafone” app – go to Mi Vodafone > mi cuenta (my account) > permisos y preferencias (permits and preferences) > permisos > and activate option “no acepto que Vodafone ceda datos anonimizados ..." (I do not allow Vodafone to provide anonymous data…).
Lowi (which is part of Vodafone): via the Mi Lowi app – go to Mi Lowi > configuración > notificaciones > permisos y preferencias.
Orange: Send an email to the Orange offices referring to “protección de datos” or direct to the email account orangeproteccion.datos@orange.com.
For Movistar users, though, the only options are to turn the mobile phone off for four days or to switch it to aeroplane mode.
Other companies such as MásMóvil, Yoigo, PepePhone, Lebara, LlamaYa and Digi are not taking part in the survey, while Orange have not confirmed whether related brands like Jazztel, Simyo and Amena are included.
On all four days of the campaign the location of the phones will be registered between midnight and 6.00 in order to determine the place of residence, and then from 9.00 to 18.00 movements will be logged for analysis as people travel to and from their workplace or the place where they study. If a phone is taken to a single location for at least four hours on at least two of the days monitored, that journey will be considered “daily”.
Further monitoring periods will coincide with public holidays and the summer, the intention being to reach conclusions about the behaviour of the population in terms of travel at times when they are not working: monitoring will take place on Sunday 24th November, on Thursday 5th December (the eve of a long holiday weekend) and on 20th July and 15th August 2020. In return for the “aggregated” (or summarized) data the three participating companies are being paid the sums of 163,616 euros (Telefónica), 150,000 euros (Vodafone) and 185,000 euros (Orange).
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