They don't even need to; your telco can know your home address based on a week's worth of location data, and could likely determine more about you based on where you go to work, shop, etc. Humans are creatures of habit, so it's relatively easy to draw inferences from simple patterns (i.e. if you spend 6-8 hours in the same location every night, that's probably where you live.) All it takes is one time checking your e-mail from an IP address to forever link that IP address to you. Know enough IP addresses someone has connected from and you can come up with a pretty good picture of their friend circle, their movements, how old they probably are, etc.
I work in the telecom industry, and this behavior exists because it's not explicitly illegal. This type of data mining is just scratching the surface of their capability -- turns out that a combination of about 30 seconds worth of data scraped off http traffic (not https, though even https can tell you something) and a location are enough to identify most individuals and link them to a profile in a DMP -- which can tell you all sorts of information like which products you've purchased recently (both online and in brick and mortar stores with a credit card), any relevant demographic information, and even what kind of porn you like.
The real restraint on this has been in the use of this information. Marketers have been remarkably conservative in using this information; likely for fear of scaring off customers with "creepy" data. But rest assured they know more about you than you do yourself.
Thanks; that is valuable information. So my whole plan (in the top-level post at the root of this discussion) is hopeless, at least in terms of having anonymous, untracked phone usage?
> your telco can know your home address based on a week's worth of location data
How accurate is that location data, do you know? Within 10 yards? 100 yards?
I work in the telecom industry, and this behavior exists because it's not explicitly illegal. This type of data mining is just scratching the surface of their capability -- turns out that a combination of about 30 seconds worth of data scraped off http traffic (not https, though even https can tell you something) and a location are enough to identify most individuals and link them to a profile in a DMP -- which can tell you all sorts of information like which products you've purchased recently (both online and in brick and mortar stores with a credit card), any relevant demographic information, and even what kind of porn you like.
The real restraint on this has been in the use of this information. Marketers have been remarkably conservative in using this information; likely for fear of scaring off customers with "creepy" data. But rest assured they know more about you than you do yourself.