Smartphone users, beware: Your device's accelerometer can give you away

Smartphone users, beware: Soon, your own gadget could potentially give parties like advertisers and even government agencies the means to track you online.

 

Researchers at Stanford University and the Israel Institute of Technology said the culprit is the accelerometer, tech site Mashable reported.

 

"This could provide a way for mobile devices to get identified as they browse the Internet, without reliance on cookies. We can think of some uses for individuals, but the majority of scenarios would be in the device identification and tracking category," it quoted one of the Stanford researchers, Hristo Bojinov, as saying.

 

Mashable said Bojinov and colleagues have built a basic site that collects such data, but the site may not be able to collect data until an owner sets the phone flat on a table and flips it after some time.

 

In the near future, Bojinov said a data-mining script could be written and placed on any site.

 

Also, an identification method may soon be able to mine accelerometer data while a phone bounces in a pocket, Mashable added.

 

Bojinov said no two phones roll off production lines exactly alike, because of tiny so-called "defects" in accelerometers that are unique to each phone.

 

He said this allows them to be identified.

 

Also, most browsers make the accelerometer data available to the webpage code without the owner's knowledge, so the owner may not know he or she has been identified.

 

Thus, there is little the user could do. "There are no cookies to delete or privacy settings to change," Mashable added. — TJD, GMA News