Privacy

Privacy

The main difference between a mobile phone and any other piece of electronic equipment is that it is truly personal.

Every customer’s phone is unique to them. It becomes:

• A record of calls made, received, and places visited – physically and electronically.
• A storage for personal data.
• A log of personal identity – largely for the purposes of electronic commerce, with applications such as being able to pay London congestion charges by text message.

We believe that a debate is developing about personal privacy and the capacity of mobile phones to collect and process information about individuals.

There is already public unease about the ability of governments to access personal communications, as well as the practices of commercial organisations.

At O2, we are anxious to understand where our responsibilities lie in securing both people’s safety, on the one hand, and their liberty, on the other.

In 2005 we sponsored an online debate: ‘Mobile Society – Do mobiles invade our privacy?’ We will run a second debate on privacy during 2007.

We want to help protect young people and the vulnerable from illegal content and to instigate more debate.

Government has put in place a legislative framework seeking to balance collective security needs with the privacy of the individual.

In the UK, these include the:

• Data Protection Acts.
• Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive.
• Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act.
• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

We aim to comply with this legislation – which covers communication intercepts that help police investigations, and the retention of mobile traffic data and spam.

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What are location-based services?

Location-based services identify the approximate position of a handset by sending a location request to the network. The reply pinpoints the base station closest to the mobile. Accuracy varies from as little as 50 metres to several kilometres.

Using location-based services, mobile phone users can find out information on traffic in the area, download a map or find local amenities such as banks, shops and taxis.

People can also locate or be located by friends and family for safety purposes. But this requires consent from both parties by way of text message alert and acceptance.

Also, a mobile user can only be located by services that they have agreed and signed up to on request – such as calling 1200 for local Trafficline news in the UK.

O2 handsets also enable customers to change their privacy settings. UK customers can call 1300 to prevent such services working. This includes for instance, the increasingly available ‘child finder’ services and other ‘passive’ services which operate when a mobile phone user has enabled the service and consents to be located by another person (the parent, for example).

We know there are many benefits to location-based services – including the ability for parents and carers to keep track of their children when on the move.  But with these benefits comes potential for misuse and inappropriate contact.

In 2006 a provider of a new location-based child-tracking service approached O2 Ireland. O2 held several focus groups with parents to find out whether this service would be welcome or not. We concluded it was unwise to go ahead with the service because:

• It could not pinpoint the exact location of the child and was therefore not fully reliable.
  
• A child, unbeknown to the parent, could switch off the service manually.

However, we have partnered with this provider on some of our business accounts where people need to be able to locate vehicles and couriers. This enhances services for our customers without raising issues of privacy.

To change privacy settings and prevent location-based services working, call 1300 (in the UK).

 

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