Study secretly tracked 100,000 cellphone users' locations
By Joshua Fruhlinger 
posted Jun 4th 2008 11:32PM
posted Jun 4th 2008 11:32PM
Ask yourself this: Are you a statistic or a specific example? That's the question being raised in the aftermath of a study in which researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people to determine their movement patterns. Such studies are considered invasions of privacy -- and illegal -- in the United States, but this one was done in an undisclosed industrialized nation. The subjects were chosen at random out of a pool of 6 million from a mystery wireless provider and tracked based on cell tower triangulation and other "tracking devices." Study co-author Cesar Hidalgo at Northeastern University promises that researchers didn't know the individuals' phone numbers or identities, and offers that the results are a major advance for science. The study found that people are homebodies -- most stay within 20 miles of their home and are rather habitual. Scientists say the findings -- to be published in Nature on Thursday -- can help improve public transit systems and even fight contagious diseases.[Thanks, Doug]
[Via MSNBC]
it was the uk, duh. they're already being watched anyway.
No wonder I couldn't shake that feeling that I was being watched and tracked at the same time! At least now I know I'm not crazy :p.
You hear the voices to?
I once participated in a study similar, but knowingly. I had a GPS receiver installed in my car and it tracked me for a few weeks.
I hope you made extra trips to the strip club, just to screw with the statistics.
Yes illegible. Just to screw with statistics. And not for any other purpose.
I love all the mystery in this post. "undisclosed industrialized nation" and "mystery wireless provider"
...because one they stop being the "Mystery wireless provider" they'll become the 'Bankrupt wireless provider" ...
We might as well give up the fight for privacy because the government or private industries will always pull this kind of $hit on us.
Well, ramp stuff up and make your own country.
It has been done,
http://www.ln2.us/b86747
BIG BROTHER IS TRACKING YOU
Thanks captain obvious.
"can help improve public transit systems and even fight contagious diseases."
yeah, sure... more like "can help improve slimy companies to market their trash more effectively".
If indeed the "researchers didn't know the individuals' phone numbers or identities", then how do they know that these people where "home"? Maybe they were at Moe's like Homer does. Or at a GF/BF's.
Any study will have anomalies such as you described. Chances are though, most people that are in the same location for extended periods of time will either be at home or work/school.
If their position is triangulated and plotted on a map or satellite image of the area (say, Google Earth), and they happen to be plotted to a private residence for 8 hours/night while sleeping, it would seem pretty logical to conclude that such a locale was their "home". It's not like a location plot doesn't correspond to a point on a map.
the fact that they can figure out where you live from this anonymous study raises a few questions don't ya think?
Exactly. So even though they did not know the phone number or name of the phone owner, they knew exactly where they live and where they work. Ahem. In this case I doubt this was of any real interest to researchers but if they lied about data not being identifiable, what else did they lie about?
What sort of rubber-stamp ethics committee let that through?
Oh, Northwestern. Color me completely unsurprised.
I cant seem to find that color
http://www.kongbeng.com/images/Reeves%2012%20Water%20Colours%201a.jpg
It was Northeastern, that other directional school.
Which would be flawed because most people (in my experience) other than mac users don't even have webcams. Same reason the variables on above experiment are flawed; T-mobile sucks. and so I can't take my phone overseas without giving a quart of blood for minute money every few hours.
A more accurate representation that also conforms to the morals of Northwestern University sociologists would be to surgically implant GPS tracking devices into the bodies of open-heart surgery patients and homeless people.
Fascists.
Anonymous government employee working on a news brief:
We identified, tracked and assassinated...no, no, wait...ahem... We identified, tracked and contained a contagious vector...yeah, that's much better!
Why not let people sign up knowing they could be tracked, pick from that pool without them knowing if they're picked and study it that way?
They need samples that are completely random to be scientifically relevant. People who volunteer tend to result in pretty big margins of error due to bias and, well, enough free time to volunteer for these things.
That would make sense, when was the last time anything made sense?
Kind of stupid to get outraged at this kind of stuff - it was anonymous - the local laws allowed it. The people weren't informed, but in their contract/legal system they forfeit that right when they carry a cell phone. What's the problem?
This is the same as having a person follow another person for that period of time, but a lot less expensive in terms of man hours. I'm allowed to follow you around as long as you're mostly in public spaces, and this study only tracked people to the nearest mile or so.
see that creepy van parked outside your window? that's us... we're gonna track you for a while... hope you don't mind.
"The people weren't informed, but in their contract/legal system they forfeit that right when they carry a cell phone. What's the problem?"
What's the problem? Check the first part of your sentence.
They weren't overtly informed. They gave informed consent by signing the cell contract. Nobody reads them of course, but the company probably had legal consent.
Are they people who like their face? Brrr... So much for facism. They have to track 100K people just to improve their face!
I wonder if I'll ever get all freaked out about my privacy. I could really care less if I found out I had been tracked. Woulda been a heck of a ride since I travel across the country most weeks.
My wife was ready to kill me when I ignored for months her pleas for window coverings when we moved into our first house.
People usually stay within 20 miles of their home? Wow, I hope the Nobel committee comes calling for that discovery!
As a recent graduate of Northwestern University I was a bit shocked to read about this, because I definitely would have heard something about this.
Then I read the article, and realized it was conducted at NorthEASTERN University in Boston, not the Northwestern of Evanston. Made me feel slightly better about the situation.
So it could be used for "improving public transportation" and "fighting the spread of deadly diseases".
HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Whom are you kidding? This is for commercial purposes. This kind of information can and will be turned into money, and everyone participating in the creation of this study was thinking about cold, hard cash, first and foremost.
Benefiting humanity - sure, but only as an afterthought.
Good job on the use of whom there Webster.
All cell phones sold since 2005 have GPS trackers. "E911". Sure. And if you think you really can shut them off when you don't want to be tracked, well, what can I say to that. You're wrong. It's just a computer. It can be tweaked, just like a voting machine or tabulator.
Really...how do i get government funding for doing a study like this? I cant believe that
1) someone paid for this
2) It is considered a breakthrough in science
3) they even had to do anything to figure it out
I mean really, its pretty much just common sense.
Who is going to drive an hour or more to get a cup of coffee? of course people stay within 20 miles of their home. I gotta new survey.... who likes work? give me 20 mil, and ill "discover and report" that people would rather be at home drinking a beer than at work. stupid. almost as dumb as the guy in england that got paid 10k for getting drunk in a museum and calling it art.
The sum of their conclusion was not "people are homebodies". A great deal of information will be extracted an analyzed from the data.
i think the "people are hme bodies" revelation is just like throwing the scraps of research to the public. there is mountains of data they can extract from this , but they dont want to alarm anyone.
maybe they will compare this data to that of the guinea pigs in thier labs and conclude the guinea pig has a better quality of life.
I am so tired of all this "Big Brother" talk, unless you're doing something illegal, who cares that someone might be tapping your phone or tracking your movement. There are way too many ignorant hippies in this country, you all need to get a life and realize that the "right to privacy" only goes so far.
Your name wouldn't happen to be Cheney, would it?
I generally find people who start mouthing off about "hippies" are assholes who themselves need to "get a life"
No, genius, I don't have to be doing anything illegal to have a problem with this. It's just wrong, period. I'll resist shit like this because today it's tracking users by their cell phones unbeknownst to them, tomorrow it's "papers, please".
Fuck that noise.
So the right to privacy is only invoked by the guilty? Do you see NOTHING wrong with that assertion?
Information is power; whoever possesses all the information, possesses all the power.
These increasing invasions of privacy by our institutions of government, business, and education are not intended to benefit honest citizens, but to increase these institutions' power, control, and profit.
I'm glad I don't own a cell phone.
+1.... You think I'm paranoid now, you'll be wishing you were me 50 years from now... (if I live that long)
worst case scenario would be.. if someone exploits the tool..
Heck, this little experiment is small potatoes compared to the data that the credit card companies and grocery store chains are collecting on you... or did you think that they gave you a preferred customer card just because you were special?
HA! It's all about tracking what toilet paper you buy, what part of town you shop in, how often you travel outside your home neighborhood, how many babies you have (and therefore diapers you buy)... and that's just the stores.
Think of the data that the credit companies have on you. Your salary, everything you've ever bought on-line, where you've traveled for work, where you vacation, what type of car you prefer to rent versus what car you own, who you admire and send flowers to, the type of home you own or condo you rent, the jobs you've had, the restaurants you prefer, the smut you subscribe to, the gifts you buy and on what frequency, whether your a Borders, Amazon, or Barnes and Nobel type of person, Starbucks or Seattle's Best, Bud or Bud Light... these people have more data about who you are and where you go and when and how often and your preferences while you're there and how many drinks you have at which bars... and you're worried about a little anonymous cell phone tracking?
I say again, HA!
But they probably mention this collecting of information in their 23489723498 pages of 'terms and conditions' when you sign up for the card...
That's why I pay with actual money only :-)..... Plus that way I never use more than I have
Yes I have a CC, but I use it only when necessary (ie. buying online)
and then they use that information to create surgically precise ad campaigns that form classes of indebted consumers who, with every swipe of their credit cards, unknowingly contribute to the creation of their own material desires as well as incurring the debt to satisfy them.
smut? ah shit!!
if this didn't happen in Japan, I bet Nextel had something to do with it... all their phones carry gps since years ago...
As long as the technology to do so is available it will be done! This is the price you pay for your luxuries.
Hint: dont want this to happen? turn off your phone! You can always call in and check your VM.
This happens with your phone off: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029_3-6140191.html
Why do you think the battery only lasts a few days with the phone off? If you take it off it will last months at full charge... Don't believe me, try it yourself
95% of Americans only travel about 45 miles, round trip, for work. Many Americans work out of their own home.
It would be far more worthwhile to interview people on their public transit habits.
I, for one, find the study fascinating and have no problem whatsoever with this.
.... happening to other people.
It's strange that Nature is even willing to publish results that were created in such an ethically doubtful way.
We're all doomed... [and governments will know precisely where every one of us is doomed]
There could be big differences depending on the industrialised nation selected, eg I've heard that Luxembourg's population nearly doubles every weekday as commuters drive to work from nearby towns in France, Belgium and Germany...
Well, if they tracked me, I probably left my phone at home for most of the time. Hah!
Not really. This is Nature. Like they care.
This is nothing compared to how a certain government is allowed (literally) to perform tests on the public, messing with the air people breath.
I love this
"The study found that people are homebodies -- most stay within 20 miles of their home and are rather habitual"
Why even have a cell phone then?
Oh yeah, to impress your "friends"
Breaking news! Most people go to work in the mornings and come home in the evenings. They do this 5 times a week! This has only been discovered due to our comprehensive study!
I could have told them that without making any studies.
Really... "Human movement"? How is this anything more than what we could already assume?
Are most people going to be moving vast distances everyday?
Very over exaggerated importance of data.
20 miles in the UK is equal to about 500 miles in the US. Really how many people that live in London ever go outside the city on a daily or weekly basis. Same thing with Tokyo.
Going from Cleveland to Pittsburgh is like driving from London to Wales or Scotland.
People are staying close to home because it costs to much to drive anywhere. Ugg