[lucb1e]

You're approaching it rather theoretically. Yes, even a landline generates data and metadata, but do you feel watched when owning a landline the same way as when you see that you have like three different companies tracking you in every app or website?

[criddell]

I think some people feel a landline is better as far as surveillance goes, but I think that comes from back in the day before telecom companies realized that they were sitting on a goldmine. Today, every part of your interaction with any telecom company is monetized.

[lucb1e]

Maybe that's my European view on things, but I doubt that. They would have to tell me in the privacy policy that they share my phone records with third parties, with which category of companies they share them, and for what purpose. Moreover, after moving to Germany and getting a phone bill twice as high as I expected the first month, I could not even get my records to check what I was being billed for, because I did not opt in to storing that data. They (said they) didn't have the data because I didn't ask them to store it.

It wasn't a large enough amount (by far) to take it to court, though, so I can't know for sure, but lying about not having the data and keeping it secret when hundreds of employees are in the know (if they are indeed selling it, or at least a handful of employees if it's just storage for billing) sounds rather conspiratorial. A little like dieselgate, so I'm not ruling it out as possible, it just seems very unlikely.

[criddell]

I was definitely speaking from a US perspective. I would be so happy if the US would start doing more to lock up user data. We already protect health data (HIPAA) and I think it would be a great idea to extend that to all data connected with an individual or account.