A new way of tracking mobile users creates a globally unique device fingerprint that browsers and other protections can’t stop.
A proof-of-concept for a new type of privacy attack, dubbed “calibration fingerprinting,” uses data from Apple iPhone sensors to construct a globally unique fingerprint for any given mobile user. Researchers said that this provides an unusually effective means to track people as they browse across the mobile web and move between apps on their phones.
Further, the approach also affects Pixel phones from Google, which run on Android.
A research team from the University of Cambridge in the UK released their findings this week, showing that data gathered from the accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer sensors found in the smartphones can be used to generate the calibration fingerprint in less than a second – and that it never changes, even after a factory reset.
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