UK mobile network EE has hit back at claims that it planned to sell on personal customer data, branding an article that appeared The Sunday Times 'misleading'.
EE, formed after an amalgamation of Orange and T-Mobile, has a deal in place with research firm Ipsos Mori that allows the firm to sell on EE's data.
According to the article in question, Ipsos Mori held talks with The Met Police over potentially supplying the force with personal data from EE's subscriber base.
The mobile network however has refuted these claims and says that Ipsos Mori is party to only anonymised data grouped in samples of 50 people or more.
A statement from EE said: 'We would never breach the trust our customers place in us and we always act to comply fully with the Data Protection Act,
'The information is anonymised and aggregated, and cannot be used to identify the personal information of individual customers.'
The Sunday Times article said that data from 27 million of EE's customers was on offer - encompassing information such as gender, age, postcode, browsing histories, as well as SMS and location data.
Speaking to the BBC, the Met Police confirmed that it had met with with Ipsos Mori to discuss how such data could be used to fight crime, but added it 'has made no offer to purchase data from Ipsos Mori nor has any intention of doing so.
This is not the first time that mobile-data intelligence has caused issues such as this and the practice of collating and selling on information has, in recent times, become a lucrative revenue source for mobile operators.
O2 for example offers 'analytical insights' to retailers and businesses via parent company Telefonica, whose digital insight team provides 'a digital headcount to help them understand the movement of crowd'. Vodafone also offers a similar 'footfall and outdoor media tracking' service.
by clareh via Featured Articles
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