By Jonathan Mayer on December 23, 2013 at 8:32 am
Co-authored with Patrick Mutchler. This is a project of the Stanford Security Lab.
Just over a month ago we launched MetaPhone, an Android app for crowdsourcing phone metadata. Our results have already confirmed that phone activity easily reveals private relationships, is deeply interconnected, and can trivially be identified.
We’ve received lots of great feedback on the study from researchers and participants. One request has been especially consistent: show me my metadata!
Starting today, the MetaPhone app will provide personalized results about your phone metadata privacy.
New displays will reflect how closely linked you are to other MetaPhone users. (The NSA can follow three “hops” from a single “seed” number.)
The number that connects you to the most other users.
And the businesses you’ve been in contact with, automatically identified by Yelp and Google Places. (The NSA has emphasized that it collects numbers, not names.)
If you haven’t participated yet, please consider joining!
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