Mobile Phone Use Patterns Identify Individuals Better Than Fingerprints 88
chicksdaddy writes "Mobile phone use may be a more accurate identifier of individuals than even their own fingerprints, according to research published on the web site of the scientific journal Nature. Scientists at MIT and the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium analyzed 15 months of mobility data for 1.5 million individuals who the same mobile carrier. Their analysis, 'Unique in the Crowd: the privacy bounds of human mobility' showed that data from just four, randomly chosen 'spatio-temporal points' (for example, mobile device pings to carrier antennas) was enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals, based on their pattern of movement. Even with just two randomly chosen points, the researchers say they could uniquely characterize around half of the 1.5 million mobile phone users. The research has profound implications for privacy, suggesting that the use of mobile devices makes it impossible to remain anonymous – even without the use of tracking software."
Many thanks for this submit ! (Score:4, Interesting)
I learn something very useful today !!
It really sends chills up my spine reading TFA --- it IS that easy to identify and track and predict the location of any individual based on what TFA has outlined !!
Man ... I think I gotta get more cellphones with different phone companies, that way I can rotate the use of the phones to cut down of the chance of being identified
Re:+5 Bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
For many people, changing their fingerprints is easier than changing their cell phone habits.
start calling random numbers (Score:4, Interesting)
all this proves is that most people do the same thing every day. wake up, go to work in the same place, hit the same cell towers and call the same people
i bet if you start calling random numbers every day it might make it harder to identify you
Re:Profound implications! (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's what it does mean.
With access to this data (even if its through an abstraction API), I could match back a profile created based on one device (using a device ID) with a new device owned by the same person.
So lets say I'm a retailer and I want to track your visits to my stores based on your device ID. That works and is anonymous assuming that I'm not allowed to access your PI directly (as is the case). I can of course ask you to identify yourself through an app or whatnot to attach a name/email to you and match that to my CRM system.
Now the problem is that when you change devices, pow, I'm out of luck for the anonymous tracking (the app would transition easily enough and could be cross platform, assuming you have an incentive to get it again).
However with this abstracted "fingerprint" API I could conceivably request a match back for your new device against the database and get your old device ID in response, voila - anonymous transition of the profile to your new device. I can now continue tracking you with no lost history.