The location data - what is actually passed on?

DomiP · Mar 27, 2020

The location data - what is actually passed on?

Yesterday and today there is a lot of talk on the radio and TV about the data collection that Swisscom makes available to the BAG. However, it is never stated what information Swisscom passes on about us here.

Does anyone know more about this? Of course I don’t want to open an office here, but I would be interested to see what an object in this data set would look like, as the normal collection about us customers at Swisscom is already quite a bit.

WalterB · Mar 27, 2020

@DomiP

A piece of information!

[https://www.watson.ch/digital/schweiz/637670268-coronavirus-wie-uns-schweizer-handy-technik-vor-covid-19-retten-koennte] (https://www.watson.ch/digital/schweiz/637670268-coronavirus-wie-uns-schweizer-handy-technik-vor-covid-19-retten-koennte)

Chrisiboy · Mar 27, 2020

Swisscom sees where cell phone users are at a certain time, which radio cell they were in and which one they moved on to. This data is anonymized and evaluated. The BAG can then say whether there were more or fewer people (cell phones) in an area at the same time. This way you can check whether many people were at a certain place.

The smaller the radio cells, the more precise it becomes. There are more radio cells in cities and along traffic axes (city, highway), so you can also tell where people have moved.

Swisscom has been selling this data for a long time, e.g. to ASTRA. The important thing is that it’s not about the individual user or real-time monitoring, but rather about being able to subsequently say when many users are where and where they have moved.

WalterB · Mar 28, 2020

@Chrisiboy

But this data is very imprecise, you can e.g. Activate the search mode on the iPhone and you can then see that the iPhone is displayed several 100m away from the correct location.

It always depends on the antenna location.

Chrisiboy · Mar 28, 2020

That’s completely enough for the taxes that the BAG requires, it’s just a matter of assessing whether there are the same number of people at collection points as before or whether people are staying at home.

DomiP · Mar 28, 2020

That’s exactly what I know, and that’s a good thing.

Although I suspect that many of the risk group either turn off their device, leave it at home or don’t have one at all (I know enough of them) - that also blurs the statistics considerably or not - do you see it differently?

hed · Mar 29, 2020

It’s not about absolute numbers, but about the comparison before/after.

The statistics would then be falsified if a large number of users suddenly turned off their smartphones when they left the house because they incorrectly fear that they are now being monitored.