Bullet Business

Mobile phone companies are reportedly seeking an endorsement from Liberty, the civil rights group, to assuage consumer concerns over possible misuse of the private data they hold on file.

According to a report filed by www.guardian.co.uk, the campaign group has been approached by several firms seeking its seal of approval. No deals have been signed, it added.

Such approval is quite significant in the context of "customer unease about the practice of selling on personal information to third parties and the risk that companies could be forced to hand over sensitive data to the government", highlighted the report.

Research carried out by polling company YouGov earlier this year showed gambling companies were the least trusted sector, with only four percent of people saying they had faith in such companies protecting their data. Mobile phone companies scored just nine percent, some way below the 25 percent of respondents who said they trusted central government.

Since last October mobile telephony companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) have been required to store data on every text, call, e-mail and web page impression and surrender it to the authorities if required. Recently, it was shared that the UK Government is contemplating taking this vital data in-house.

On setting up a database of all phone and e-mail traffic in the country as part of a high-tech strategy to fight terrorism and crime, Liberty reportedly said there were "huge dangers" in collecting so much data about every person in the country. "The bigger the data haul, the greater the temptation to treat innocent habits as suspicious behaviour," the group's policy director, Gareth Crossman, had said, according to The AP.