Really smart phone

Apple’s and Google’s tracking of people’s use of their mobile phone’s location and time may have raised public concerns about personal privacy issues – the real future of cell phone tracking in a stormy apartment building in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Progressively revealed that Alex Pentland, director of the Human Dynamics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tracked 60 families residing on campus for nearly two years. Sensors and software installed in their smartphones record their activities, relationships, emotions, health, call habits, and phone bills. Through these large and detailed information, he discovered a variety of human behavior patterns that can reveal how people communicate with others at home, at work, and during leisure and entertainment.

Through this and other mobile research projects, scientists can accurately identify “impacters” who are most likely to change their minds. The data can also predict, with incredible accuracy, where people may appear at any given time in the future. Mobile phone companies have begun to use these technologies to predict - based on a user's friends circle - which users are most likely to invest in the arms of other operators.

Studies have shown that these data can reveal subtle signs of mental illness, can indicate the trend of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and can record the spread of political thought as infectious viruses in a region. Researchers said that in Belgium, cell phone data reveals a phenomenon of cultural separatism that is triggering a historic political crisis locally.

Returning to MIT, during the last presidential election, scientists tracked students' mobile phones to infer that two people were talking about politics, even though the researchers did not know the specific conversation. By analysing changes in mobile phone user activity and communication patterns, researchers can also discover which students have flu symptoms. At this time, the sick students themselves are not aware that they are sick.

Pantlán, who helped promote this research, said that mobile phones can let people know something. People can observe their own behavior as God looks down on humans.

So far, these studies have touched only the surface of human complexity. Researchers are already exploring information collected through mobile phones to improve public health, urban planning, and marketing methods. At the same time, researchers believe that their findings implied the basic rules of human communication, and this poses new challenges to people's concept of privacy.

Johan Bollen, an expert at complex Indian networks at Indiana University, said that we always think individuals are unpredictable. These (behavioural) laws allow the system to understand each individual better than we do.

Today, nearly three-quarters of people worldwide use mobile phones. This behavior of people has spawned a huge commercial database from which we can learn how we can coordinate ourselves in a network of power, money, love, and trust. Through these models, researchers can see our common behaviors through individual differences.

As a field research tool, the characteristics of the mobile phone are unique. Unlike traditional fixed-line phones, a mobile phone is usually used by only one person, and it will always follow this person during the day. While a mobile phone company tracks the location of a mobile phone (partly because it connects the mobile phone to the nearest cell phone tower), it usually also tracks the phone's talk time, call duration, and the user's billing address.

In general, mobile phones can record call data, text messaging activities, search requirements, and online activities. Many smartphones are also equipped with sensors that can record the user's activity, sense that the phone is approaching other people carrying the phone, detect light levels, take pictures, or record videos. Smartphones are often equipped with compasses, gyroscopes, and accelerometers to sense rotation and orientation.

Advances in statistics, psychology, and social networking science have provided researchers with tools for discovering patterns of human behavior that are too subtle to be otherwise noticeable. At Northeastern University in Boston, online physicists discovered that human behavior is predictable by studying the travel habits of 100,000 European mobile phone users.

After analyzing the records of more than 16 million call dates, talk times, and call locations, the researchers concluded that overall human behavior seems to follow a precise pattern. The scientists said that as long as there is enough information about past behavior, they can predict the whereabouts of someone in the future, with an accuracy rate of 93.6%.

This model is applicable to both the home-based and the people who travel frequently and is not affected by the age and gender of mobile phone users.

The leader of the experiment, Northeastern University physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, said that in our opinion, human beings are like tiny particles that move in space and communicate with each other from time to time. We have turned society into a laboratory where people's behavior can be objectively tracked.

Academics have only recently had the opportunity to study data related to commercial mobile phones. Researchers say that until recently, most mobile phone providers were barely aware that they could explore social relationships from their own data. Now this situation is changing, although privacy regulations have restrictions on how companies can share data.

Recently, some mobile phone companies in Europe and Africa have provided a large number of call records for scientific purposes. Names and personal data have been omitted.

Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard University, said that for research purposes, we don’t care who these people are. Christakis is using cell phone data to study how diseases, behaviors, and thoughts are transmitted through social networks, and how companies can use these networks to influence drug marketing and medical decisions.

His research focuses on "social infections" - the concept that our relationships with those around us sometimes have a major impact on our behavior in unexpected ways, and that this kind of interpersonal relationship is very easy to use on mobile phones. It is reflected in the process. For example, according to his calculations, obesity is contagious and loneliness is also.

Although the user’s name was not disclosed in the mobile data, some personal information could be revealed when they were associated with other data. A recent lawsuit in Germany made people see the unusual scene caused by regular cell phone tracking. The green politician Malte Spitz accused Deutsche Telekom of sneaking through his personal records. This is one of Spitz’s actions to emphasize privacy.

According to Spitz's data released in March, Deutsche Telekom recorded his location more than 35,000 times in six months. Through the combination of mobile data and public records, the news site Zeit Online has recreated Spitz's daily trips for several months.

Recently, news that Apple's iPhone will automatically save the phone's position in the past few months, causing privacy concerns. "The Wall Street Journal" recently reported that Apple and Google (Android operating system is Google's production) do more than just these, in fact, the two companies also collect location information from their smart phones. Tests on an Android phone show that it records location information every few seconds and returns it to Google several times an hour.

Google and Apple said that the data returned by the user’s mobile phone is anonymous, and users can turn off location sharing.

Nathan Eagle, a researcher at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, said that we can quantify people’s activities to some extent, which was not possible in the past. I don't think anyone can read this grouping data. Iger works with 220 mobile phone companies in 80 countries. Its largest single research data group covers 500 million people in Latin America, Africa and Europe.

As one of the contents of the research work, Iger uses these data to assess how the slums can catalyze the economic vitality of a city. Simply put, the slums provide opportunities for entrepreneurial activities that exceed people's previous understanding. He said that slums are an economical springboard.