Supporting the fight against coronavirus with aggregated data

Data from telecom networks can help governments and health authorities make better-informed decisions in managing the response to the coronavirus.

As part of the Vodafone Group’s Five-Point Plan to help counter the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak, we are committed to help improve governments’ insights into people’s movements in affected areas.

We have received requests to share our data and insights to support the work of the UK Government and local authorities during the coronavirus pandemic.

We remain committed to respecting your privacy and being transparent about our activities.

Our firm commitment is to only share anonymised and aggregated population data and insights for the purpose of assisting governments and health authorities in managing the response to the coronavirus.

How this works is we analyse the raw data generated by our mobile network and aggregate it to a statistically significant level so that no individual customer can be identified, and no personal data is included.

We then share the data and insights that result from our analysis. These data and insights will be in the form of maps, charts, diagrams, tables and graphs about population movement statistics and patterns. For example, we might look at how overall population movements between UK regions have changed because of the introduction and easing of social distancing and lockdown measures by the Government.

The data and insights are also aggregated and don’t contain information about any one person, even in anonymised form. We don’t share personal data of our customers unless it is compliant with existing laws and regulations.

Throughout the process, we make sure we are compliant with the relevant data protection laws and consider the Information Commissioner’s Office’s guidance. Moreover, we consider the ethical and human impacts of data sharing and make sure we have strict requirements on the use, disclosure, security and retention of our reports in place with the recipients.

Even though you can't be identified by this activity we want you to have the choice to opt out of it.

• You can opt out at any time by texting OPT OUT to 68808 from your Vodafone device. This will remove you from future network data analysis activities.

• To re-join at any time, text OPT IN to 68808 from your Vodafone device.

If you have more than one SIM, you’ll need to send the relevant text from each of your Vodafone devices.

All texts are free of charge when you text from the UK.