7 ms·

What Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data

112 points by edent 3y ago

jruohonen 3y ago
Same here with the city's local transport system. Ironically, they've pretty much also forced everyone without a car or a bicycle to use their mobile [surveillance] app, so you are pretty much [presumably unlawfully] forced to disclose your personal data in order to go to work. The only alternative is an old-fashioned credit card -style thing, but even that requires you disclosing your real identity for who knows what reason. Ironically, when you visit Central Europe, for instance, you can use similar transport services just fine with cash. Furthermore, the city's mobile app hasn't really done anything for the tax payers; in fact, the fees have only increased. But I'm sure someone somewhere benefits from the personal data collected. A cross-reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38013750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38013750
- soco 3y ago
  You can use them with cash but why would you go through all those hoops? Better fix the personal data creep and illegal surveillance at the source, I'd say, then we can all benefit from good travel system planning and all those wins which big data promised us - while mostly delivering more ads instead.
  - alwayslikethis 3y ago
    We should really just stick to anonymous stored value cards that can be recharged by cash. Forcing anything else is surveillance overreach.
    - multjoy 3y ago
      Cash payments aren't the easy win you think they are. The system has to know where the money was paid from and when, at which point you just go back to the CCTV. Any system that relies on a UID is trackable, it just depends how much legwork you're prepared to put in.
      - wuiheerfoj 3y ago
        That’s also true of any digital means, and watching CCTV doesn’t scale well. Adding that legwork is precisely why cash is a win
        brightlancer 3y ago
        China has proven that no one needs to "watch" CCTV, because the system will automatically identify everyone in the camera frame. That still requires more resources than mobile app tracking, and it's easier for people to disguise themselves against a camera rather than mobile app tracking, so mobile app tracking is the greater current threat. But CCTV identification will improve and it will be harder to fool, so I don't want that either.
  - jruohonen 3y ago
    As so many people here bash and misunderstand the GDPR, I can tell you why. I leave the surveillance out. What I man by (probably) unlawful is not that they wouldn't have the right to collect that data due to public interests. And I am sure many locals wouldn't bother sharing their data with the city if it helps to improve its and hence theirs transport system (like it probably does). But you'd have to reverse engineer the app to see whether the data goes also to ad-tech and who knows who else. That's one thing. And also a telecom has the data due to different obligations. But they also do business with it. That's the second thing. Also the smartphone manufacturer probably has it, and that's the third interesting thing. But, now, under the GDPR, none of them "own" the data because it is your personal data. With this point, please also stop using the term PII. This covers anything and pretty much everything; like the author, I am interested in the geolocation data but I'm sure there's a lot more interesting stuff. Then, under the GDPR---because it is your personal data and it "belongs" (for a lack of a better term) to you---you'd want to exercise the many rights granted to you by the laws, the GDPR and the Charter. Particularly, you'd want to exercise your rights to have your personal data and transfer it to another system in a portable manner. In fact, you want it real-time through a 24h API because it is your fundamental right. Then, assuming you have your personal data from the city, from the telecom, and from the smartphone manufacturer, you can compete with them, do AI/ML with your personal data, do crowd-sourced science with others, do open data with open source, donate it to your favorite city in Europe or even the EU, or, hell, even sell your personal data if you want to. That's why I wrote unlawful (probably).
    - barrysteve 3y ago
      What a hopeless ideal. You don't have any control over personal data when the law assigns ownership to you. The law assigns personal ownership of your data, to control you. The farcical idea that some law will allow the individual to reverse decades of progress towards electronic identity systems (even for themselves) is a joke. It's over for the British, the culture won. You cannot oppose cultural movements anymore, because they happen behind a computer screen. Britian is dead.
      - jruohonen 3y ago
  - distant_hat 3y ago
    Given the ubiquity of cameras and how optimized face recognition has gotten over time, this is mostly pointless at this time. You will be tracked unless you really pull a major disguise every time you go out.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  > The only alternative is an old-fashioned credit card -style thing, but even that requires you disclosing your real identity for who knows what reason. Oh bullshit. You can buy and use an oyster card anonymously. I do. Stop spreading FUD.
  - jjgreen 3y ago
    Me too, but I wonder for how much longer ...
- paganel 3y ago
  > Ironically, they've pretty much also forced everyone without a car or a bicycle t In many cities across the Western world, and even here in Eastern Europe, it has become impossible to "hide" your movements by car inside big cities because of the authorities forcing mobile parking apps down people's throats. In other words it has become almost impossible to pay for parking by cash, anonymously, to a machine installed at the side of street, you have to pay via those mobile apps (or through SMS, which is basically the same thing).
  - Reason077 3y ago
    London hardly needs to track you with parking apps. Ubiquitous ANPR cameras will instantly flag up any vehicles of interest. If you want to drive into the city to do something naughty, better swap license plates!
- mikrl 3y ago
  Flowdan - Welcome to London They got Oysters, they’re not just seafood So the boy-dem can follow and see you
uoaei 3y ago
I care about privacy quite a bit but there doesn't seem to be much controversy here. Yes it's creepy that O2 has pretty tight demographic data and shares some of that information with TfL, and we have to assume they're doing that for other more nefarious customers with fewer privacy restrictions. But telecoms being involved in that kind of shady business is old news. I'm all for improving the information (given it's private) that public transit service lines and scheduling planners have access to if it means smoother transit and especially less dependence on cars.
- vidarh 3y ago
  > I'm all for improving the information (given it's private) that public transit service lines and scheduling planners have access to if it means smoother transit and especially less dependence on cars. My dream is a CityMapper style app used to offer "virtual public transit" as the means to both collect this kind of info and actively use it to make transit better. That is, say TFL were to offer up "virtual bus routes" that may or may not coincide with the real ones, and that feed other transit hubs. Where they coincide with regular routes, the selling point would be that they'd hire cars to handle excess demand or gaps in service so you can guarantee pickup from any bus stop within x minutes as long as you plan a journey in the app. What's great about the tube is knowing you can just show up and there's "always" a train soon. Getting something like that for busses would be fantastic, and you can offset some of the cost of guaranteeing more frequent service by actually cutting the frequency of full-size scheduled buses on less used stretches as long as you guarantee on average shorter waits when people need it. Maybe with some limitations - e.g. if not a "real" bus you might be shunted onto regular services at the nearest transit hub. Where they don't coincide with regular routes, you use first/last mile data from the planning to try to guess at new routes to offer, and so when people book, they might get offered to go to a nearer pickup point that isn't a bus stop but where you're guaranteed to be picked up. There are some services sort-of like this, but usually as a separate thing, and it'd be great if it's fully integrated as a means to plug holes in service and test route changes. I think there's a lot of chicken and egg going on with transit where likely viable routes aren't available because testing them out is difficult and expensive and gathering data on which routes might be useful likewise. If you can fill them with smaller, cheaper cars and dynamically test, I think it'd have the potential to get a lot more people to try to stick with public transport. Especially if it also offer "fallback" or combined options involving booking a taxi for all or part of it when even the virtual routes can cut it. CityMapper is great for the planning in London, but that ability to offer "virtual routes" at scale is what would really change things.
unregistereddev 3y ago
The question is how Transport for London is such an inexcusable dumpster fire. I'm sorry London, but your public transit is the most expensive I've ever encountered and the least efficient public transit system I've encountered outside of the United States. It generally gets you where you need to go, but often via roundabout routes. Both buses and trains are often delayed and sometimes don't arrive at all, so you best not be in a hurry. Trains are so expensive that a car ride is usually more cost effective, even with the congestion fees.
- M2Ys4U 3y ago
  >The question is how Transport for London is such an inexcusable dumpster fire. I'm sorry London, but your public transit is the most expensive I've ever encountered and the least efficient public transit system I've encountered outside of the United States. Definitely don't try and use public transport anywhere else in England then!
- tablloyd 3y ago
  The maximum daily cap for an adult from zone 1 - 9 is around £21. It will categorically not be cheaper than using a car to use TFL transport within London. I think you may be confusing TFL services with national rail services.
  - starlevel003 3y ago
    In practice a massive majority of people will be within Zone 6 at the furthest, where the daily cap is £14.90.
- reedf1 3y ago
  It is expensive because it pays for itself through fares, as I understand it this is quite rare at a global level, recovering the most of all of Europe, and much more than anywhere in NA.(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio)
  - rtkwe 3y ago
moritonal 3y ago
The title is misleading, the emotional "It's crazy how much Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data" becomes "TFL can extrapolate from an anonymised & time-limited subset of third-party data aggregations of the gender, age and travel-type of a sum of people.
- jruohonen 3y ago
  "Anonymization". Two reasons: either they de-anonymize the data, which is a good exercise for them but still approximate, or the demographic data is merely registered beforehand. Here, I think they for instance need the age (and not its category) because of discounts to young and old people.
- whent 3y ago
  > The title is misleading, the emotional "It's crazy how much Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data" The title: What Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data I don't see what about the title is so emotionally charged. It only asks the question what London transport can learn from mobile data and the article answers precisely that.
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
    The HN title is edited/muted compared to the article's actual title.
bazmattaz 3y ago
This is a great piece of investigative journalism and a great write up. Like the author says what they’re doing is not illegal and it’s GDPR compliant. It definitely makes me think though that GCHQ certainly have the deanonymised stream of data from all cellular providers - only for use in “matters of national security” of course
- whent 3y ago
  After Brexit, is GDPR relevant to London transport anymore? I'd guess that UK now probably has their own version of GDPR?
  - xp84 3y ago
    I read somewhere very recently that because GDPR was enacted before, that it still applied there. I'd appreciate it if someone confident in their legal knowledge could correct or confirm this claim.
  - switch007 3y ago
    Yes there is a ‘UK GDPR’ in domestic law
  - logifail 3y ago
    https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-and-the-eu/data-protection-and-the-eu-in-detail/the-uk-gdpr/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-and-the...
xp84 3y ago
Reading the conclusion really reinforces for me the difference in priorities. One group thinks it actually would be nice to have big datasets to serve useful aims like this. But also maybe even to track actual bad people down. Despite their frequent portrayal as evil Big Brother, they don't want to use it to do harm. The other people are afraid of a totalitarian state having control of such data because obviously it would be super bad. The first group might argue, "As this is in theory a democratic society, can we just not voluntarily elect awful people would would make a totalitarian government? And then in the meantime we can actually use this to do good, like catching actual dangerous criminals?" The second group clearly believes the descent into totalitarianism is inevitable and just wants to hobble those future villains as much as possible (A noble idea if you believe this). I think the first group could argue that if a truly evil dictator does come to power, they would have zero qualms about imposing the really scary surveillance stuff themselves anyway, so what we're doing now doesn't matter as much as we think. I don't think either is automatically wrong, but I wish both sides would acknowledge that the other has a point.
- barrysteve 3y ago
  If it were truly about tracking bad people down, you wouldn't need a planetary wide dataset. Specific "tasks" are bounded by their requirements, we've seen none of that in the take-all and leave no stone unturned approach to electronics. There is a false calm in not taking this seriously enough. The default reaction of many is to avoid hurting feelings, at the cost of western liberty. Your choice.
- jewayne 3y ago
  I hate to say it, but recent history shows me that many of the people who are most afraid of the government are also the most enthusiastic about letting "their guy" do whatever he wants, "laws" be damned. They see the other side as a totalitarian threat, but see our democratic institutions as part of that totalitarian threat.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Do not imagine the good that an all-powerful government could do when people you agree with are in charge of it. Imagine instead the damage an all-powerful government could do when people you disagree with are in charge of it. Because, with probability 1.0, they will be someday.
barrysteve 3y ago
It is pure horror watching the West surrender it's conscience to an electronic culture. At some point, it will be trivial to force people to act against their conscience, en masse, with electronic precision. Computers don't take no for an answer. They are the horrifying interface to tyranny.
wackget 3y ago
> "...using this sort of data is increasingly routine for local authorities and others. To the extent that O2 even has a brand name for this line of its business – “O2 Motion”." Oh, that's nice. How lovely that by being an O2 customer I'm able to contribute in so many different ways as a cash cow profit-making machine. I'm sure they'll be sending me my cut of the extra profits any day now, perhaps as a discount off my bill? What's that? They're increasing prices above inflation year-on-year? Well, I am shocked! Not to worry - I'll show them! I'll just switch to one of their competitors! The free market in action! What's that? Their competitors are all doing the same things? And many of their competitors actually use O2's network infrastructure? Well, guess I'm fucked.
- switch007 3y ago
  And there will be fewer competitors if Vodafone and Three merge

112 points by edent 3y ago

Same here with the city's local transport system. Ironically, they've pretty much also forced everyone without a car or a bicycle to use their mobile [surveillance] app, so you are pretty much [presumably unlawfully] forced to disclose your personal data in order to go to work. The only alternative is an old-fashioned credit card -style thing, but even that requires you disclosing your real identity for who knows what reason. Ironically, when you visit Central Europe, for instance, you can use similar transport services just fine with cash. Furthermore, the city's mobile app hasn't really done anything for the tax payers; in fact, the fees have only increased. But I'm sure someone somewhere benefits from the personal data collected. A cross-reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38013750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38013750

soco 3y ago
You can use them with cash but why would you go through all those hoops? Better fix the personal data creep and illegal surveillance at the source, I'd say, then we can all benefit from good travel system planning and all those wins which big data promised us - while mostly delivering more ads instead.
- alwayslikethis 3y ago
  We should really just stick to anonymous stored value cards that can be recharged by cash. Forcing anything else is surveillance overreach.
  - multjoy 3y ago
    Cash payments aren't the easy win you think they are. The system has to know where the money was paid from and when, at which point you just go back to the CCTV. Any system that relies on a UID is trackable, it just depends how much legwork you're prepared to put in.
    - wuiheerfoj 3y ago
      That’s also true of any digital means, and watching CCTV doesn’t scale well. Adding that legwork is precisely why cash is a win
      - brightlancer 3y ago
        China has proven that no one needs to "watch" CCTV, because the system will automatically identify everyone in the camera frame. That still requires more resources than mobile app tracking, and it's easier for people to disguise themselves against a camera rather than mobile app tracking, so mobile app tracking is the greater current threat. But CCTV identification will improve and it will be harder to fool, so I don't want that either.
- jruohonen 3y ago
  As so many people here bash and misunderstand the GDPR, I can tell you why. I leave the surveillance out. What I man by (probably) unlawful is not that they wouldn't have the right to collect that data due to public interests. And I am sure many locals wouldn't bother sharing their data with the city if it helps to improve its and hence theirs transport system (like it probably does). But you'd have to reverse engineer the app to see whether the data goes also to ad-tech and who knows who else. That's one thing. And also a telecom has the data due to different obligations. But they also do business with it. That's the second thing. Also the smartphone manufacturer probably has it, and that's the third interesting thing. But, now, under the GDPR, none of them "own" the data because it is your personal data. With this point, please also stop using the term PII. This covers anything and pretty much everything; like the author, I am interested in the geolocation data but I'm sure there's a lot more interesting stuff. Then, under the GDPR---because it is your personal data and it "belongs" (for a lack of a better term) to you---you'd want to exercise the many rights granted to you by the laws, the GDPR and the Charter. Particularly, you'd want to exercise your rights to have your personal data and transfer it to another system in a portable manner. In fact, you want it real-time through a 24h API because it is your fundamental right. Then, assuming you have your personal data from the city, from the telecom, and from the smartphone manufacturer, you can compete with them, do AI/ML with your personal data, do crowd-sourced science with others, do open data with open source, donate it to your favorite city in Europe or even the EU, or, hell, even sell your personal data if you want to. That's why I wrote unlawful (probably).
  - barrysteve 3y ago
    What a hopeless ideal. You don't have any control over personal data when the law assigns ownership to you. The law assigns personal ownership of your data, to control you. The farcical idea that some law will allow the individual to reverse decades of progress towards electronic identity systems (even for themselves) is a joke. It's over for the British, the culture won. You cannot oppose cultural movements anymore, because they happen behind a computer screen. Britian is dead.
    - jruohonen 3y ago
- distant_hat 3y ago
  Given the ubiquity of cameras and how optimized face recognition has gotten over time, this is mostly pointless at this time. You will be tracked unless you really pull a major disguise every time you go out.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
> The only alternative is an old-fashioned credit card -style thing, but even that requires you disclosing your real identity for who knows what reason. Oh bullshit. You can buy and use an oyster card anonymously. I do. Stop spreading FUD.
- jjgreen 3y ago
  Me too, but I wonder for how much longer ...
paganel 3y ago
> Ironically, they've pretty much also forced everyone without a car or a bicycle t In many cities across the Western world, and even here in Eastern Europe, it has become impossible to "hide" your movements by car inside big cities because of the authorities forcing mobile parking apps down people's throats. In other words it has become almost impossible to pay for parking by cash, anonymously, to a machine installed at the side of street, you have to pay via those mobile apps (or through SMS, which is basically the same thing).
- Reason077 3y ago
  London hardly needs to track you with parking apps. Ubiquitous ANPR cameras will instantly flag up any vehicles of interest. If you want to drive into the city to do something naughty, better swap license plates!
mikrl 3y ago
Flowdan - Welcome to London They got Oysters, they’re not just seafood So the boy-dem can follow and see you

uoaei 3y ago

I care about privacy quite a bit but there doesn't seem to be much controversy here. Yes it's creepy that O2 has pretty tight demographic data and shares some of that information with TfL, and we have to assume they're doing that for other more nefarious customers with fewer privacy restrictions. But telecoms being involved in that kind of shady business is old news. I'm all for improving the information (given it's private) that public transit service lines and scheduling planners have access to if it means smoother transit and especially less dependence on cars.

vidarh 3y ago
> I'm all for improving the information (given it's private) that public transit service lines and scheduling planners have access to if it means smoother transit and especially less dependence on cars. My dream is a CityMapper style app used to offer "virtual public transit" as the means to both collect this kind of info and actively use it to make transit better. That is, say TFL were to offer up "virtual bus routes" that may or may not coincide with the real ones, and that feed other transit hubs. Where they coincide with regular routes, the selling point would be that they'd hire cars to handle excess demand or gaps in service so you can guarantee pickup from any bus stop within x minutes as long as you plan a journey in the app. What's great about the tube is knowing you can just show up and there's "always" a train soon. Getting something like that for busses would be fantastic, and you can offset some of the cost of guaranteeing more frequent service by actually cutting the frequency of full-size scheduled buses on less used stretches as long as you guarantee on average shorter waits when people need it. Maybe with some limitations - e.g. if not a "real" bus you might be shunted onto regular services at the nearest transit hub. Where they don't coincide with regular routes, you use first/last mile data from the planning to try to guess at new routes to offer, and so when people book, they might get offered to go to a nearer pickup point that isn't a bus stop but where you're guaranteed to be picked up. There are some services sort-of like this, but usually as a separate thing, and it'd be great if it's fully integrated as a means to plug holes in service and test route changes. I think there's a lot of chicken and egg going on with transit where likely viable routes aren't available because testing them out is difficult and expensive and gathering data on which routes might be useful likewise. If you can fill them with smaller, cheaper cars and dynamically test, I think it'd have the potential to get a lot more people to try to stick with public transport. Especially if it also offer "fallback" or combined options involving booking a taxi for all or part of it when even the virtual routes can cut it. CityMapper is great for the planning in London, but that ability to offer "virtual routes" at scale is what would really change things.

unregistereddev 3y ago

The question is how Transport for London is such an inexcusable dumpster fire. I'm sorry London, but your public transit is the most expensive I've ever encountered and the least efficient public transit system I've encountered outside of the United States. It generally gets you where you need to go, but often via roundabout routes. Both buses and trains are often delayed and sometimes don't arrive at all, so you best not be in a hurry. Trains are so expensive that a car ride is usually more cost effective, even with the congestion fees.

M2Ys4U 3y ago
>The question is how Transport for London is such an inexcusable dumpster fire. I'm sorry London, but your public transit is the most expensive I've ever encountered and the least efficient public transit system I've encountered outside of the United States. Definitely don't try and use public transport anywhere else in England then!
tablloyd 3y ago
The maximum daily cap for an adult from zone 1 - 9 is around £21. It will categorically not be cheaper than using a car to use TFL transport within London. I think you may be confusing TFL services with national rail services.
- starlevel003 3y ago
  In practice a massive majority of people will be within Zone 6 at the furthest, where the daily cap is £14.90.
reedf1 3y ago
It is expensive because it pays for itself through fares, as I understand it this is quite rare at a global level, recovering the most of all of Europe, and much more than anywhere in NA.(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio)
- rtkwe 3y ago

moritonal 3y ago

The title is misleading, the emotional "It's crazy how much Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data" becomes "TFL can extrapolate from an anonymised & time-limited subset of third-party data aggregations of the gender, age and travel-type of a sum of people.

jruohonen 3y ago
"Anonymization". Two reasons: either they de-anonymize the data, which is a good exercise for them but still approximate, or the demographic data is merely registered beforehand. Here, I think they for instance need the age (and not its category) because of discounts to young and old people.
whent 3y ago
> The title is misleading, the emotional "It's crazy how much Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data" The title: What Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data I don't see what about the title is so emotionally charged. It only asks the question what London transport can learn from mobile data and the article answers precisely that.
- jodrellblank 3y ago
  The HN title is edited/muted compared to the article's actual title.

bazmattaz 3y ago

This is a great piece of investigative journalism and a great write up. Like the author says what they’re doing is not illegal and it’s GDPR compliant. It definitely makes me think though that GCHQ certainly have the deanonymised stream of data from all cellular providers - only for use in “matters of national security” of course

whent 3y ago
After Brexit, is GDPR relevant to London transport anymore? I'd guess that UK now probably has their own version of GDPR?
- xp84 3y ago
  I read somewhere very recently that because GDPR was enacted before, that it still applied there. I'd appreciate it if someone confident in their legal knowledge could correct or confirm this claim.
- switch007 3y ago
  Yes there is a ‘UK GDPR’ in domestic law
- logifail 3y ago
  https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-and-the-eu/data-protection-and-the-eu-in-detail/the-uk-gdpr/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-and-the...

xp84 3y ago

Reading the conclusion really reinforces for me the difference in priorities. One group thinks it actually would be nice to have big datasets to serve useful aims like this. But also maybe even to track actual bad people down. Despite their frequent portrayal as evil Big Brother, they don't want to use it to do harm. The other people are afraid of a totalitarian state having control of such data because obviously it would be super bad. The first group might argue, "As this is in theory a democratic society, can we just not voluntarily elect awful people would would make a totalitarian government? And then in the meantime we can actually use this to do good, like catching actual dangerous criminals?" The second group clearly believes the descent into totalitarianism is inevitable and just wants to hobble those future villains as much as possible (A noble idea if you believe this). I think the first group could argue that if a truly evil dictator does come to power, they would have zero qualms about imposing the really scary surveillance stuff themselves anyway, so what we're doing now doesn't matter as much as we think. I don't think either is automatically wrong, but I wish both sides would acknowledge that the other has a point.

barrysteve 3y ago
If it were truly about tracking bad people down, you wouldn't need a planetary wide dataset. Specific "tasks" are bounded by their requirements, we've seen none of that in the take-all and leave no stone unturned approach to electronics. There is a false calm in not taking this seriously enough. The default reaction of many is to avoid hurting feelings, at the cost of western liberty. Your choice.
jewayne 3y ago
I hate to say it, but recent history shows me that many of the people who are most afraid of the government are also the most enthusiastic about letting "their guy" do whatever he wants, "laws" be damned. They see the other side as a totalitarian threat, but see our democratic institutions as part of that totalitarian threat.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Do not imagine the good that an all-powerful government could do when people you agree with are in charge of it. Imagine instead the damage an all-powerful government could do when people you disagree with are in charge of it. Because, with probability 1.0, they will be someday.

barrysteve 3y ago

It is pure horror watching the West surrender it's conscience to an electronic culture. At some point, it will be trivial to force people to act against their conscience, en masse, with electronic precision. Computers don't take no for an answer. They are the horrifying interface to tyranny.

wackget 3y ago

> "...using this sort of data is increasingly routine for local authorities and others. To the extent that O2 even has a brand name for this line of its business – “O2 Motion”." Oh, that's nice. How lovely that by being an O2 customer I'm able to contribute in so many different ways as a cash cow profit-making machine. I'm sure they'll be sending me my cut of the extra profits any day now, perhaps as a discount off my bill? What's that? They're increasing prices above inflation year-on-year? Well, I am shocked! Not to worry - I'll show them! I'll just switch to one of their competitors! The free market in action! What's that? Their competitors are all doing the same things? And many of their competitors actually use O2's network infrastructure? Well, guess I'm fucked.

switch007 3y ago
And there will be fewer competitors if Vodafone and Three merge