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posted by janrinok on Tuesday April 29 2014, @10:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the why-is-everything-identifying-unique-user-data? dept.

Research has shown that smartphone sensors leave trackable fingerprints. Due to imperfections in the hardware manufacturing process, it is possible to distinguish different devices just from sensor data.

The researchers tested more than 100 devices over the course of nine months: 80 standalone accelerometer chips used in popular smartphones, 25 Android phones and two tablets.

The accelerometers in all permutations were selected from different manufacturers, to ensure that the fingerprints weren't simply defects resulting from a particular production line.

With 96-percent accuracy, the researchers could discriminate one sensor from another.

"We do not need to know any other information about the phone - no phone number or SIM card number," Dey said. "Just by looking at the data, we can tell you which device it's coming from. It's almost like another identifier."

Maybe this explains why Facebook would be interested in a fitness app.

Related Stories

Facebook Buys Fitness App 3 comments

After having just acquired Oculus Rift and WhatsApp, Facebook has also recently purchased Finnish company ProtoGeo Oy, the maker of a popular fitness tracking app for Android and iOS called Moves for an undisclosed sum. While the company in its press release states:

For those of you that use the Moves app, the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook.

It remains to be seen for how long that will remain true. Coverage of the acquisition at the Wall Street Journal notes:

Apps like Moves could also benefit Facebook by helping it gather data. At the heart of Facebook's business model is its knowledge about users, which it uses to sell targeted advertisements. The Facebook spokeswoman said the company won't use any data from the Moves app, but that could change in the future.

Sensor Pattern Noise in Photos Identifies Cameras 15 comments

SoylentNews reported how smart phones are trackable by analysis of data provided by the accelerometers that they contain in Smartphone sensors Leave Trackable Fingerprints and now we have another story about how it is possible to link a digital image with the camera that was used to produce it with increasing accuracy.

It has been public knowledge (but not common knowledge) since 2006 that the sensor in a digital camera leaves a unique noise fingerprint in the recorded images. Researchers have now taken that theoretical knowledge and applied it to the real world. In a preliminary study of about 3,000 images from 15 different sources, it was shown that sensor noise could be used to group images by the originating camera 90% of the time with a false positive rate of just 2%.

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  • (Score: 1) by e_armadillo on Tuesday April 29 2014, @11:32PM

    by e_armadillo (3695) on Tuesday April 29 2014, @11:32PM (#37918)

    This posting title makes it sound like the phones leave a trail, maybe they do, but that isn't what this research demonstrates. From TFA the researchers had to have an application on the phone that could access the accelerometers. So, more accurately, the sensors are a security hole that apps can use to identify you, so beware when allowing apps access to that data. Or so goes the researcher's message:

    "Don't share your accelerometer data without thinking about how legitimate or how secure that application is,"

    I don't recall being asked permission for access to accelerometer data. Contacts, location services, etc. but not motion sensor data.

    --
    "How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Wednesday April 30 2014, @12:39AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday April 30 2014, @12:39AM (#37933) Journal

    Stretch [wikipedia.org], average and add noise to counter?

    Ohh and watch those permissions and other access to analog stuff like microphone, camera and fingertaps.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 30 2014, @03:27AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 30 2014, @03:27AM (#37971)

    Maybe this explains why Facebook would be interested in a fitness app.

    Why? The sort of people who would actually use a fitness app made by Facebook would likely be using identifiers like their real name or even more unique identifiers in the first place.

    Or you saying Facebook will sell data to NSA/etc and help them tie FB accounts to other apps that use accelerometers?

    Seems a stretch, since those sort of people are likely to be 100% tracked already - doing stuff like posting their daily running routes online. See this for an example of the victim^H^H^H^H^H^Htarget market http://www.endomondo.com/ [endomondo.com]

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 30 2014, @06:10AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday April 30 2014, @06:10AM (#37991) Journal

      You can track phone sales and not at least if you try to change identity using the same phone.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 30 2014, @07:34AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 30 2014, @07:34AM (#38001)

      "sell"? more like "owns". DoD has been harvesting bulk Facebook data for years to collect "Agile Business Intelligence". It's in the DARPA Oculus reports.. Seems more like Facebook "Buy-outs" are actually just mockeries to transition military tech to public market, for whatever advantageous reason(s). The idea of Facebook paying however many billions of dollars is just there as a fake endorsement to generate perceived value to encourage distribution to a broader target audience.