Data from millions of mobile phone users was filtered by the government to track the nation’s appetite for electric vehicles (EVs), according to a report.
The study, which took place over three years, meant that customers of O2 and several other service providers had their anonymised internet history and app records passed to the government if they visited sites related to EVs at least once per month in two or more months.
The Department for Transport (DfT) under the previous government commissioned O2 to monitor a proportion of the provider’s 25 million devices as part of the £600,000 scheme. It scanned web browsing habits — including those of children over the age of 12 — and tracked people’s movements.
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The study was intended to produce a “comprehensive evaluation and understanding of the uptake and usage of electric vehicles”, according to a report published by the DfT.
It aimed to plug the gaps in data regarding the “ownership and usage, including geographical spread, distances travelled, origin-destination information and charging locations” of EV owners.
The data collection went on for two years, ending in April 2024, before Labour came into power. DfT concluded that “mobile data cannot directly be used to provide information around charging behaviour or travel time”.
Although O2 trawled its own customers, the tracking also involved Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile, Giffgaff and Virgin Mobile customers who use the same infrastructure network. Whether the other mobile service providers were aware of the scheme is not clear.
The data was “anonymised and aggregated” before being sent to the government to comply with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK’s GDPR rules.
A government source told The Daily Telegraph: “The Tories wasted taxpayers’ money on a bizarre attempt to create a nanny state for motorists. This Labour government won’t play Big Brother with Britain’s motorists — instead we’re investing record funds to end the pothole plague and keep more money in people’s pockets.”
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An O2 spokesman said the work was “entirely lawful” and the identities of the customers were not available to staff. He added: “The fully anonymised and aggregated data used by the Department for Transport showed crowd movement patterns and mode of transportation — at no point can individuals be identified, mapped or tracked at any level, and all information shared is compliant with data protection laws.”
