Your Phone’s ‘Tilt’ Sensor Allows People to Track You

From The Blaze.com (May 9):

Never mind what you actually text or say on the phone — now even the way you tap, hold and move it can be tracked.

A U.S. research team revealed your smartphone and tablet’s “tilt” and “swipe” motion sensor data — which cannot be blocked — can be used to track your movements and even determine your passwords.

Smartphone accelerometers — the gadget that helps your phone determine which way is up or down and how the screen should be oriented — emit a unique data “fingerprint” that can allow your phone to be tracked. Even if all other privacy settings are locked down, the phone still shares this data with hungry apps or hackers, according to the MIT Technology Review.

Tiny hardware imperfections in smartphone and tablet accelerometers lead to these unique “fingerprints” within the data they produce, Romit Roy Choudhury revealed. The University of Illinois associate professor investigated the phenomenon with colleagues at the University of South Carolina.

“There has been a lot of work to catch the leakage of ID information from phones,” Choudhury reveals in their paper. “We are now saying that accelerometer data going out of the phone can be treated as an ID.” [read more]

Interesting, but kind of scary too. So, turning off your phone’s GPS will do no good?  Huh.