100,000 mobile phone users somewhere in Europe have had their movements tracked to determine how we, as humans, behave. Researchers are not permitted to give out details of where the information was collected but every time one of the 100,000 made a call or received a text they were tracked using information from the mobile base station.
The findings determined that we are habitual in the places we visit (presumably, work and home feature quite highly) and that the vast majority of us travel very short distances (I’m guessing that’s between work and home). Phone data was kept secure and, in place of a mobile number, a 26 digit code was assigned to each mobile phone.
Data could only be tracked to within a 3 sq km radius but the research showed that the majority of us rarely travel out of these areas and that we typically return to the same spots over and over again. It’s almost like the majority of us move reasonably close to the places we work and where our kids go to school.
Researchers appear to have got a little light headed over the discovery that humans are lazy. They claim that it will help them in creating effective models of human behaviour. It has also been noted that sensors could be attached to mobile phones in order to track weather data, air pollution levels, and much more. Presumably the phone manufacturers would get the permission of mobile phone users before making even more money from us.
