Thursday, September 29, 2011

Retention Periods Of Major Cellular Providers

ACLU Releases Justice Department's 'Retention Periods Of Major Cellular Providers' Document


Some more chipping away at whatever semblance of privacy we still have. This article talks about how phone providers are keeping track of us. Excuse me but how did they get this right to supersede our right to privacy?

You see where this is heading, right?


"A few data points from the sheet were known outside law enforcement circles, but wireless carriers have not been open about their policies. They aren't required to keep the data, and they keep the same information for varying lengths of time. Some don't keep data at all that other companies store. For instance, it says T-Mobile USA doesn't keep any information on Web browsing activity. Verizon, on the other hand, keeps some information for up to a year that can be used to ascertain if a particular phone visited a particular Web site.

According to the sheet, Sprint Nextel Corp.'s Virgin Mobile brand keeps the text content of text messages for three months. Verizon keeps it for three to five days. None of the other carriers keep texts at all, but they keep records of who texted whom for more than a year.

The document says AT&T keeps for five to seven years a record of who text messages whom _and when, but not the content of the messages. Virgin Mobile only keeps that data for two to three months.

The carriers don't have recordings of calls, but keep information about calls that are made and received for at least a year."


Bill

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