There is truth that CDR data is valuable. The problem with this article is the hyperbole the researchers use to describe the data.<p>1. Researcher says CDR contains all the raw data you send. False. It contains call detail records. Not your internet traffic. Not your Facebook calls. Not your icloud or WhatsApp messages.<p>2. The researchers here fail to share who was targeted and share almost no verifiable data to confirm what they found. Anyone could claim to have found a hack like they claim and get credit without providing any details to draw a big headline.<p>Seems like marketing not research.
If the data hadn't been collected in the first place, it wouldn't be used against us. Data austerity is the best form of data protection. In this case the state mandates the data hoarding of telco providers, which makes it even worse.
It's easy to say that "oh, phone calls have no security at all, what do you expect?"<p>It's true that we can talk to friends and family with internet services.<p>But for businesses we use our phones. Personally I don't think I would affected if my call records were given to anyone or leaked.<p>But I can think of scenarios where it could be really damaging to someone.<p>Like imagine a celebrity was having cancer treatment they didn't want people to know. Their call.records get leaked to a tabloid who infer their calls to a clinic mean that they have cancer and run an article.<p>I can imagine that would be a painful experience.
Is this why we receive spammer phone calls that come from numbers that we have a history of dialing? I assume this is still happening because I visited Nashville for the first time this year and must have called a restaurant or two for reservations there. Now, I get a ton of Nashville spammer calls among the usual area codes that they always hit me with. Pretty curious.
Why are they even keeping years of call records? This strikes me as something that should be deleted after the current billing cycle (plus a delay for complaints, say 12 months). This kind of just-in-case or I-don't-want-to-push-the-button retention of data should hopefully be given some disincentives by GDPR but there is still a hell of a lot too much of it going on. Storage is cheap doesn't mean keep everything forever, especially potentially sensitive personal data.
We all knew this was going to happen/is happening.<p>'I have nothing to hide from the government' yeah what about the mafia, criminals and such that could/will access the data?<p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/nsa-att-intercept-surveillance/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/nsa-att-intercept-surveill...</a>