Fergie's Tech Blog

Study Secretly Tracks Cell Phone Users Outside U.S.

An AP newswire article by Seth Borenstein, via The Mercury News, reports that:

Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.

The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.

It also yielded somewhat surprising results that reveal how little people move around in their daily lives. Nearly three-quarters of those studied mainly stayed within a 20-mile-wide circle for half a year.

The scientists would not disclose where the study was done, only describing the location as an industrialized nation.

posted by Fergie @ 6/04/2008 12:20:00 PM