Data retention

With data retention, personal connection data of telecommunications services is stored for a legally prescribed period. Providers of telecommunications services are thus obliged to retain connection data for a period of six months so that action can be taken against those affected in the event of criminal acts. Movement and personality profiles can be derived from the data stored in the data retention system.

Data retention applies to all connection data for telephone and mobile communications services, the Internet and e-mails. Specifically, in the case of telephony, this involves storing the caller and called party numbers, the date and time of the connection, so that the duration of the connection can be derived from this. In the case of Internet telephony, IP addresses must also be stored.

As far as mobile networks are concerned, it is a matter of making calls and sending them in short message service( SMS). The information stored is the same as for the fixed network, but in addition, location-based data from the location directory( HLR) and the visitor directory( VLR) is also stored. For SMS, the sender and recipient addresses are stored, as well as the date and time.

In the case of Internet activities, this involves data from the log files from which the IP address and the connection identifier are obtained. The storage of e-mails also involves the e-mail addresses of the sender and recipient and the date and time when the recipient accessed the mail server.