Beautiful Virgin Islands

Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

Oxford secretly used cell phone data to track millions as part of government-ordered vaccination study

Oxford secretly used cell phone data to track millions as part of government-ordered vaccination study

The UK government has admitted it used phone data to analyse people’s movement patterns without their knowledge as part of a vaccination study, a new report claims. Officials are said to have preserved the subjects’ anonymity.

The Telegraph cited a report by the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) which said researchers from the University of Oxford discretely used data from mobile phones as part of their study into how vaccination affects people’s lifestyles.

SPI-B advises the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), which in turn advises the government. The University of Oxford, which developed the Covid-19 vaccine along with the British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, conducted the study on SPI-B’s behalf.

The scientists were said to have dug through the “cell phone mobility data for 10 per cent of the British population” in February and singled out 4,254 people that were vaccinated. They then monitored the group’s movement patterns for the week before and the week after vaccination.

The researchers did “various robustness checks,” sorted by age, and measured “distance from home to vaccination point,” among other things, according to the Telegraph. By comparing the movement of the vaccinated people to a different group, the scientists found that their “average pre-vaccination mobility increased by 218 meters [sic].”

Privacy group Big Brother Watch says the findings are “deeply chilling and extremely damaging to public trust in medical confidentiality.”

"Between looming Covid passports and vaccine phone surveillance, this Government is turning Britain into a Big Brother state under the cover of Covid."


A government spokesperson told the Telegraph that the data using the research was “at cell tower rather than individual level” and had been properly “anonymised.” The spokesperson added that the researchers were granted ethical approval from Oxford.

A government source further clarified to the paper that the data was “extensively anonymised by the company before it is used for research,” and that only “a small group of pre-approved researchers” had access to it. The source stressed that the project was “not individual surveillance,” because using only cell phone tower data would not make it possible to accurately identify individuals.

The source explained that people were given “a new token of identification” each month to preserve anonymity, and the only basic demographic data that was shared was age.

“It is not GPS tracing data which is commonly used by some large commercial companies for targeted advertising,” the source said.

Privacy campaigners have been raising concerns over contact-tracing and other medical apps that were developed during the pandemic. Last month, Google and Apple refused to make an update for the NHS contact-tracing app available for download on their app stores. The app would have asked users to upload venue check-ins, and the US-based companies were against the collection of such information.

Last year, the UK’s privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), allowed the use of phone data in fighting the coronavirus. “Public bodies may require additional collection and sharing of personal data to protect against serious threats to public health,” the ICO spokesperson said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×