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"New research has discovered that smartphone apps and sensors can be used to find your location, no matter what privacy settings you may have. Accelerometers are used in various apps to track movements of smartphones, including pedometers, games and sleep monitors.  The University of Illinois&amp;#039; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has found that there can be a unique &amp;#039;fingerprint&amp;#039; in the generated data created by such apps, reports The Daily Telegraph. The data could then be used to locate you, as it is delivered to the cloud to be processed. It therefore isn&amp;#039;t affected by privacy settings in regards to the withholding of location data, which could lead to the phone being the target of a cyber attack. &amp;quot;Just by looking at the data, we can tell you which device it&amp;#039;s coming from. It&amp;#039;s almost like another identifier,&amp;quot; said graduate student Nirupam Roy. &amp;quot;Even if you erase the app in the phone, or even erase and reinstall all software, the fingerprint still stays inherent. That&amp;#039;s a serious threat.&amp;quot; The team behind the research also stated that other sensors could process the same information, including cameras and microphones. Over 100 devices were tested over nine months, with 80 standalone accelerometer chips used in various popular smartphones, 25 Android phones, and two tablets. &amp;quot;Imagine that your right hand fingerprint, by some chance, matches with mine,&amp;quot; said associate professor Romit Roy Choudhury. &amp;quot;But your left-hand fingerprint also matching with mine is extremely unlikely. So even if accelerometers don&amp;#039;t have unique fingerprints across millions of devices, we believe that by combining with other sensors such as the gyroscope, it might still be possible to track a particular device over time and space.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/news/a567566/smartphones-locations-can-be-found-despite-privacy-settings/>