Data Retention

[Skybird]

I sometimes notice that people take it easy when it comes to how easily a profile of their habits and movement patterns is being established and recorded on them because they carry an active cellphone with them. Maybe this interactive graphic helps to cure that a bit.

http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte...data-retention

Zoom into the map to reach a reasonable scaling. Then either just run the animation by clicking the play button, or move your cursors to the graphs below the map that list dates, and time of day for each day (leftclick and hold while moving laterally or vertically).

Then realize that this kind of data is recorded when you have an active cellphone with you. That it is recorded, and you have no real control over who gets these data, and does what with it. Maybe you even live in a country where the storage of such data is legally possible for ten and 15 years.

Then imagine what can be learned about you if somebody decides to use these data against you. And what these data reveal about you when combining them with more data about yourself, won by other sources like social networks, commercial data mining, use of your credit cards, and so on. Not to mention data traffic you send and receive.

The data belongs to a Green politician who sued the Deutsche Telekom to get access to the data stored about him, and then revealing his data to the newspaper to make this project possible.