The contract starts with a credit check that is itself a record, and the network logs your approximate location with every call, text and session. Much of the file is then kept for the length of a legal limitation period, not your contract.
A continuous location and contact record. Keep it on the list.
Call and location metadata is retained for months to years under communications law.
A contract requires identity verification: ID document and a credit check.
Industry profile reviewed 23 August 2026. Also machine-readable via the free API.
Call records show who you speak to and location shows where you sleep. That pair has already been sold down a chain of buyers and used to track named individuals.
A credit check is the price of the contract
A monthly plan commonly starts with a credit check. Your personal and financial details go to a credit reference agency, and the search itself becomes a record there. That record stays at the agency, up to six years in the UK, on a file the carrier never holds and cannot clear for you.
Location comes with the signal
Every call, text, and data session records your approximate location, down to the nearest cell tower. Policies frame this as a technical need to connect you, not a choice, so the consent controls don't reach it. Those controls are kept for precise or optional location features; the everyday cell-level trail is treated as the cost of a working phone.
Leaving starts the retention, it doesn't end it
Closing the account doesn't clear the file. Policies commonly keep it for years after you go: often two years, and in the UK as long as seven years, tied to legal-claim windows, tax, fraud, and winning you back. Where a policy gives no number, it keeps the file 'as long as necessary,' which is their judgement, not a limit.
Worked out from the industry, not from any one company. What you actually handed over is yours to record.
Built only from what this kind of service actually collects. A dimension that the data does not support is not listed.
Cell-tower logs track your movements minute by minute.
Call and message records map everyone you know.
Two kinds of hold. LAW SETS IT: a statute makes them keep it. THEY SET IT: a ground the company grants itself.
Data-retention notices can require call and connection logs.
To flag suspected fraud, often on a shared industry database you cannot reach through the company.
Tax and company law makes them keep billing and payment records.
They can keep records to defend a live or possible legal claim.
Carrier location has a resale market. US regulators found the four largest wireless carriers sold access to customers' location to data aggregators, who passed it down a chain of buyers; one trail reached a sheriff tracking people through a prison-phone vendor. The carriers pushed the job of getting your consent onto those buyers, so in many cases it was never obtained. The fines came to nearly 200 million dollars.
Aggregate location and usage data has an established resale market.
Network and usage patterns train models; location is the sensitive part.
Anonymised is their word, and mobile location data is the exact kind of dataset the research used: four time-and-place points single out 95% of people (de Montjoye et al., Scientific Reports, 2013).
Fifteen demographic attributes re-identify 99.98% of Americans in a released dataset (Rocher, Hendrickx and de Montjoye, Nature Communications, 2019); date of birth, postcode, and sex alone did it for most people in the first study of the problem (Sweeney, 2000).
Four time-and-place points single out 95% of people in mobility data (de Montjoye et al., Scientific Reports, 2013).
Four card transactions identify 90% of people in payment data (de Montjoye et al., Science, 2015).
Browser and device fingerprints were unique for 84% of visitors in the first large study (Eckersley, 2010), and sparse histories of what people viewed re-identified them against public reviews (Narayanan and Shmatikov, 2008).
The shape of who a person connects with re-identifies accounts across networks with no other data (Narayanan and Shmatikov, 2009).
THE STUDIES Estimating the success of re-identifications in incomplete datasets using generative models (Nature Communications 10, 3069, 2019)·Simple Demographics Often Identify People Uniquely (Carnegie Mellon University, Data Privacy Working Paper 3, 2000)·Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility (Scientific Reports 3, 1376, 2013)·Unique in the shopping mall: On the reidentifiability of credit card metadata (Science 347 (6221), 2015)·How Unique Is Your Web Browser? (Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2010), 2010)·Robust De-anonymization of Large Sparse Datasets (IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2008)·De-anonymizing Social Networks (IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2009)
Clauses that recur across this industry, and what each one actually permits.
“to provide and improve our services”
The catch-all purpose. Analytics, profiling, personalisation, and increasingly AI training can all ride under it. When they want to do something new with your data, this sentence usually already covers it.
THE MOVE An objection draws the line: use your data to run the service, not to improve, target, or train on it.
“we do not sell your personal information”
Often technically true, and still misleading. It usually means no cash changes hands. Data can still flow to ad networks, analytics firms, and partners: on their definition, sharing is not selling.
THE MOVE Flip the do-not-sell switch where one exists. The written objection on top of it goes on your record.
“service providers, partners, and affiliates”
How data leaves the building with no name attached. Recipients are listed by what they do, never who they are. You cannot send a request to a company you cannot name, which is the point.
THE MOVE An access request can ask for the recipients by name, not just the categories. UK and EU law put that choice with you. The reply, or the silence, goes on your record.
“aggregated or de-identified information”
Stripping the name does not strip the pattern, and the pattern often still points at you. Policies grant themselves free, indefinite use of this data because in their telling it is no longer about you.
THE MOVE If a deletion comes back as 'anonymised', keep the reply. It is their claim, not a fact you can check.
“retained as long as necessary, or as required by law”
They can keep it for: legal duties, tax rules, fraud prevention, possible lawsuits, their own business reasons. None of them carries a firm end date. Deletion becomes a negotiation, not an event.
THE MOVE Which reasons apply to you, and how long each runs, is a request of its own. Their reply goes on your record.
“you grant us a licence to use your content”
A contract term, not a data setting, so a privacy request cannot undo it. The careful version ends with your account. The broad version can be passed on, never expires, and survives deletion.
THE MOVE Whether the licence ends with the account is written in their terms, not yours. Closing the account goes on your record.
“held in case a legal claim is bought under the limitation act 1980”
Keeps the whole account, billing, and payment file for six to seven years after you leave, tied to the window for bringing a civil claim rather than to any service you still use. This is the clause that makes a closed account outlive the contract by years in the UK.
THE MOVE Which parts of that file are still held, and under what reason, is theirs to answer. Their reply goes on your record.
“we do not sell information that identifies who you are”
Denies selling your data with a denial scoped only to information that names you. Usage and location streams that have been aggregated or stripped of your name sit outside that promise and can still be shared as 'insights.'
THE MOVE What they build from de-identified data, and where it goes, is theirs to answer. Their reply goes on your record.
“in case you decide to use our services again”
Keeps your contact and account details for an unstated 'reasonable period' after the contract ends, for winning you back rather than serving you. The same wording turns up word for word across unrelated carriers, standard template language for post-contract retention.
THE MOVE How long that period runs, and what it holds, is theirs to answer. Their reply goes on your record.
Their own policy is the one that binds them. Pin it down with a request, and keep the reply. Start your record →