Ideas change everything

Your phone company is watching

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Malte Spitz |

TEDGlobal 2012

• June 2012

What kind of data is your cell phone company collecting? Malte Spitz wasn't too worried when he asked his operator in Germany to share information stored about him. Multiple unanswered requests and a lawsuit later, Spitz received 35,830 lines of code -- a detailed, nearly minute-by-minute account of half a year of his life.

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

What kind of data is your cell phone company collecting? Malte Spitz wasn't too worried when he asked his operator in Germany to share information stored about him. Multiple unanswered requests and a lawsuit later, Spitz received 35,830 lines of code -- a detailed, nearly minute-by-minute account of half a year of his life.

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This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

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Join a global movement that demands privacy from governments and companies.

About the speaker

Politician, data activist

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Malte Spitz asked his cell phone carrier what it knew about him -- and mapped what he found out.

Learn more

Was macht ihr mit meinen Daten? [German]

Malte Spitz | Hoffmann und Campe Verlag (2014)

Malte Spitz - *Was macht ihr mit meinen Daten?* [German]

What are companies doing with Malte Spitz's data?

Over at his site, explore a visualization of all the known data collected about Spitz since 1996.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

Read our curation guidelines.

Join a global movement that demands privacy from governments and companies.