Research Shows Foreign Cellphone Users Don't Move Around Much

Category: Mobile
Posted: June 4, 2008 04:53PM
Author: ClayMeow

In the United States, tracking people via their cellphones without consent would be illegal.  This isn't the case overseas.  Over a six month span, researchers at Northeastern University secretly tracked 100,000 people outside the United States.  According to the study, "nearly three-quarters of those studied mainly stayed within a 20-mile-wide circle" during that time, and nearly half of the people stay within a circle slightly greater than six miles wide.  Researchers say that such data could help city planners understand traffic patterns or doctors fight the spread of contagious diseases.  Whether the public would agree with the usefulness of this data is a different matter; privacy is an issue people do not take lightly.

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