Collaboration T-Mobile,Twitter and the invisibles

Since 9/11 our privacy has been reduced for security reasons. Consequently companies can store all or internetdata 6 months till two year in order "to protect the country" . George Orwell has written the book 1984 about the feature of our privacy and the role of the government controlling our social lives with data. Nowadays Orwell can be falsified because of the fact that not only the government are taking our lives in to control but also big brands like TomTom, Facebook, Sony and T-Mobile are the owners of worlds most powerful data. In this blog I will explain the danger of this development by the use of a personal case including the specific role of T-mobile and Twitter.


 German politician Malte Spitz (Die Grunen) is nowadays emphasizing for more attention on this dangerous development in the European Union. In order to generate some attention, he executed an experiment with T-Mobile. In a nutshell, he asked T-Mobile to print all his stored mobile-records and with this data he simply reconstructed his last 6 months on this planet.  I can hear the reader say: So what? Based on my own experiences according to T-Mobile and Twitter I can simply answer this question using a personal case.

If different company's combine their data, things gets interesting but also scary. For this course I was asked to make a Twitter account. Because of the fact I am a proud user of a Samsung D600 (2003) for seven years I am not influenced or restricted by a 24/7 online connection through a mobile-phone. Consequently, I am only capable of using Twitter and the internet in the morning (before college) or in the evening (after college).

Only a week after I registered my Twitter-account I received an e-mail from T-Mobile. This e-mail was the first e-mail in three months I received from T-mobile (see Figure 1). Subject: Do you have to go home to use the internet? Because of the facts stated above I do not believe in a coincidence in this case. Ironically, after the e-mail I went directly to the website with the aim to speak on of the commercial manager. On the end of my website trip I purchased a new license which is costing me lot more money than the one before. 



Mission T-Mobile (& Twiiter et al.?): completed.


Figure 1: E-mail from T-mobile. Click to enlarge.

Further readings:

zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-data-retention

http://www.malte-spitz.de/blog/4103927.html

http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk-online/VK/20110507___/VKN01_018/#print

http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2844/Archief/archief/article/detail/2074727/2011/05/07/Bij-Orwell-wist-alleen-de-overheid-alles-De-spion-in-je-broekzak.dhtml