How to use mobile phone data for good without invading anyone’s privacy

In 2014, when the West African Ebola outbreak was at its peak, some academics argued that the epidemic could have been slowed by using mobile phone data. Their premise was simple: call-data records show the true nature of social networks and human movement. Understanding social networks and how people really move -- as seen from phone movements and calls -- could give health officials the ability to predict how a disease will move and where a disease will strike next, and prepare accordingly. The problem is that call-data records are very hard to get a hold of. The files themselves are huge, there are enormous privacy risks, and the process of making the records safe for distribution is long. On their own, phone data records are not creepy. Indeed, without them, networks would be unable to connect calls or bill customers. But it is easy to see why operators aren’t rushing to share this information. Even though the data includes none of the actual content of a phone call in the data, simply knowing which number is calling which, and from where and when, is usually more than enough to identify people.

So how can network operators use this valuable data for good while also protecting their own interests and those of their customers? A good example can be found in Africa, where Orange, a French mobile phone network with interests across several African countries, has for the second year run its “Data for Development” (D4D) program, which offers researchers a chance to mine call data for clues on development problems.