Even basic phone logs can reveal deeply personal information, researchers find

Stanford study shows how details gleaned from telephone 'metadata' by National Security Agency pose a threat to privacy of ordinary citizens

The mass collection of telephone records by government surveillance programs poses a clear threat to the personal privacy of ordinary citizens, according to US researchers who used basic phone logs to identify people and uncover confidential information about their lives.

Armed with anonymous "metadata" on people's calls and texts, but not the contents of the communications, two scientists at Stanford University worked out individuals' names, where they lived and the names of their partners. But that was not all.