VIDEO: Smartphones and metadata – a question of privacy

Published: July 8, 2014 9:22pm EDT

Philip Branch, Swinburne University of Technology

Author

Philip Branch
Senior Lecturer in Telecommunications, Swinburne University of Technology

Disclosure statement

Philip Branch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Partners

Swinburne University of Technology provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

View all partners

Metadata – as the name suggests – is data about data. While most of it may seem innocuous, it can be highly valuable to police, investigators and others.

With the proliferation of smartphones, the amount and type of metadata that is available has increased dramatically. In this episode of TCTV, Philip Branch explains the privacy consequences of having all this metadata available.

This video is a co-production between SBS World News and The Conversation.

Want to write?

Write an article and join a growing community of more than 182,400 academics and researchers from 4,942 institutions.