Security News > 2022 > February > How mobile app usage data could reveal a person’s identity

They fed 4,680 days of app usage data into statistical models.

Each of these days was paired with one of the 780 users, such that the models learnt people's daily app use patterns.

Dr Ellis from the University of Bath said: "Our models, which were trained on only six days of app usage data per person, could identify the correct person from a day of anonymous data one third of the time."

Smartphone apps could identify person even when logged-out.

Dr Shaw from Lancaster University said: "We found that people exhibited consistent patterns in their application usage behaviours on a day-to-day basis, such as using Facebook the most and the calculator app the least. In support of this, we also showed that two days of smartphone data from the same person exhibited greater similarity in app usage patterns than two days of data from different people."

It is important to acknowledge that app usage data alone, which is often collected by a smartphone automatically, can potentially reveal a person's identity.

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/02/24/smartphone-apps-identify-person/