James Delahunty
13 May 2013 18:55
UK mobile operator EE has defended its user data selling practices after a report showed interest from the Metropolitan Police.
Wireless Operators around the world are amassing enormous amounts of data on their users' habits, and marketing it to a variety of potential buyers. EE, in the UK, has come under fire amidst media reports that the Metropolitan Police was interested in buying data.
However, EE blasted the initial report in the Sunday Times, saying it is misleading.
The Times report indicated that Ipsos Mori - which has a deal to sell on EE's user data - had held talks with the Metropolitan Police, and that information from 27 million customers was on offer, including gender, age, postcode, visited websites and so on.
"We would never breach the trust our customers place in us and we always act to comply fully with the Data Protection Act," a statement from EE said.
"The information is anonymised and aggregated, and cannot be used to identify the personal information of individual customers."
It said that Ipsos Mori only has access to data which has been anonymized and grouped into samples of 50 or more people. It does not sell on information that can be attached to any individual user.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed to the BBC that it was investigating if such anonymized data could be useful in its day to day operations, but said it has made no offer to buy the data and has no intention of doing so.