London Underground

Main article: London

History

2019: London Underground begins monitoring passengers via public Wi-Fi

At the end of May 2019, London's transport agency announced the introduction of a system to track passengers using public Wi-Fi hotspots on the London Underground. "Secure data collection with privacy protection" launched in test mode, and on July 8, 2019 it will work in full.

London Underground passengers to be tracked to MAC addresses

The findings are expected to improve customer service - including warning of station delays and congestion. The use of impersonal Wi-Fi data will allow you to more accurately assess the movement of people around stations and prioritize transport investments. Earlier, ticket sales data was used for this purpose, but they did not allow assessing the flow of traffic through the station. Current data on station occupancy will be published on the website of the transport agency, in its application and on pages in social networks. In addition, they will be available through the API, so that mapping services can provide more convenient routes for their users.

Wi-Fi hotspots at 260 London Underground stations will track users to the MAC addresses of mobile devices, allowing users to protect themselves from surveillance by simply turning off Wi-Fi. The pilot four-week trial involved 54 stations and resulted in the transport agency collecting more than 509 million pieces of data from 5.6 million mobile devices.

The agency reminds that data is collected only about requests for connection to a Wi-Fi network, the browser history is not available for this system. All collected data will be stored anonymously by the transport agency - real MAC addresses will be replaced with identifiers that cannot be traced to a specific device or its owner. The anonymisation programme has been fully approved by the UK Information Commissioner's Office.^[1]

1983

Girls on the London Underground, 1983

1972

1972 London Underground wagon design.

1939

London Underground workers are examining tickets for traffic analysis. 1939.

1890

London Underground, 1890

1863: Metro opening

The cars of the first London Underground were carried by a steam locomotive. The stations found it difficult to breathe due to locomotive smoke and poor ventilation.

Notes