“We need to have a wide discussion about data in Germany”

10. November 2016

Reuters online reported that Telefonica Deutschland’s chief executive, Thorsten Dirks, said in an interview “People are right to scrutinize any attempt to make money off their data. At the same time they are a handing over data voluntarily to companies such as Google and Facebook”. He concludes that there is a double standard among consumers.

At the moment Telefonica Deutschland holds anonymized data of 44 million mobile customers. These information could be used to track the movements of crowds and traffic, as well as “many other areas that we at the moment cannot think of”, according to Dirks.

Dirks explained that Telefonica aims to be a platform for all devices connected to the internet and therefore processing all sorts of data gathered from sensors in cars, electronic devices and household apparel.