Slashdot Mirror
Mobile Phone Use Patterns Identify Individuals Better Than Fingerprints
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."
Mainly in efficiency - it runs in Ring 0/RPL 0/PnP Kernelmode (on Windows), as merely a filter for the IP stack (no overheads of more driver layers OR browser level slower less efficient addons):
21++ ADVANTAGES OF CUSTOM HOSTS FILES (how/what/when/where/why):
Over AdBlock & DNS Servers ALONE 4 Security, Speed, Reliability, & Anonymity (to an extent vs. DNSBL's + DNS request logs).
1.) HOSTS files are useable for all these purposes because they are present on all Operating Systems that have a BSD based IP stack (even ANDROID) and do adblocking for ANY webbrowser, email program, etc. (any webbound program). A truly "multi-platform" UNIVERSAL solution for added speed, security, reliability, & even anonymity to an extent (vs. DNS request logs + DNSBL's you feel are unjust hosts get you past/around).
2.) Adblock blocks ads? Well, not anymore & certainly not as well by default, apparently, lol - see below:
Adblock Plus To Offer 'Acceptable Ads' Option
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/12/12/2213233/adblock-plus-to-offer-acceptable-ads-option )
AND, in only browsers & their subprogram families (ala email like Thunderbird for FireFox/Mozilla products (use same gecko & xulrunner engines)), but not all, or, all independent email clients, like Outlook, Outlook Express, OR Window "LIVE" mail (for example(s)) - there's many more like EUDORA & others I've used over time that AdBlock just DOES NOT COVER... period.
Disclaimer: Opera now also has an AdBlock addon (now that Opera has addons above widgets), but I am not certain the same people make it as they do for FF or Chrome etc..
3.) Adblock doesn't protect email programs external to FF (non-mozilla/gecko engine based) family based wares, So AdBlock doesn't protect email programs like Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows "LIVE" mail & others like them (EUDORA etc./et al), Hosts files do. THIS IS GOOD VS. SPAM MAIL or MAILS THAT BEAR MALICIOUS SCRIPT, or, THAT POINT TO MALICIOUS SCRIPT VIA URLS etc.
4.) Adblock won't get you to your favorite sites if a DNS server goes down or is DNS-poisoned, hosts will (this leads to points 5-7 next below).
5.) Adblock doesn't allow you to hardcode in your favorite websites into it so you don't make DNS server calls and so you can avoid tracking by DNS request logs, OR make you reach them faster since you resolve host-domain names LOCALLY w/ hosts out of cached memory, hosts do ALL of those things (DNS servers are also being abused by the Chinese lately and by the Kaminsky flaw -> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/082908-kaminsky-flaw-prompts-dns-server.html for years now). Hosts protect against those problems via hardcodes of your fav sites (you should verify against the TLD that does nothing but cache IPAddress-to-domainname/hostname resolutions (in-addr.arpa) via NSLOOKUP, PINGS (ping -a in Windows), &/or WHOIS though, regularly, so you have the correct IP & it's current)).
* NOW - Some folks MAY think that putting an IP address alone into your browser's address bar will be enough, so why bother with HOSTS, right? WRONG - Putting IP address in your browser won't always work IS WHY. Some IP adresses host several domains & need the site name to give you the right page you're after is why. So for some sites only the HOSTS file option will work!
6.) Hosts files don't eat up CPU cycles (or ELECTRICITY) like AdBlock does while it parses a webpages' content, nor as much as a DNS server does while it runs. HOSTS file are merely a FILTER for the kernel mode/PnP TCP/IP subsystem, which runs FAR FASTER & MORE EFFICIENTLY than any ring 3/rpl3/usermode app can since hosts files run in MORE EFFICIENT & FASTER Ring 0/RPL 0/Kernelmode operat
I did not consent to participate in this study.
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
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The mobile carrier can tell who is using those phones with a simple database lookup, and that's an extra data point they can provide for advertisers or the FBI or whoever.
That has implications that are... well less profound, but still implications all the same.
And there I was, seriously considering running out and buying a dumbphone and a pay as you go plan, and then more news of the Orwellian nightmare we are all dilegently constructing. Isn't there some wisdom in smashing your computer with a hammer and throwing your cell phone in the toilet?
A use pattern is NOT comparable to a unique and unchanging physical characteristic as an identification method.
Profound implications for privacy... The analogies are perplexing. Should I also worry about the fact that I have ten fingers with ten fingerprints at the end of them (not mentioning toes) means that it is impossible for me to have privacy? Recent research on 1.5 Million users shows that phone numbers uniquely identify subjects 100% of the time. That does not sound like this has profound implications for privacy, does it? Now admittedly, they talk about randomly chosen "spatio-temporal points", meaning, if you think of it, that you have a good chance at any time, of being either at home or at your place of work. But since your phone number already identifies you, the profound implications for privacy referred to in the article somehow escape me...
Wow, I cannot believe my mom stooped so low...
My mom called my doctor and said to him "What's the most accurate measurement for weighing?"
The doctor said "An underwater weighing test"
And just like that, my mom said "Yes. When can my son and my daughter can take it?" and the doc said "Today at 2pm."
So, I didn't bother taking a shower and so did my sister too, so I had to get into a special swimming suit(tight pants...Ugh).
My sister said "Can I pull my hair down to a ponytail?" The doctor said "No."
So my sister with her long, blonde hair went underwater with 8 seconds and had she must enjoyed it..but I didn't.
My sister had to wear pants and a bra, so she enjoyed minutes of going underwater. I didn't take a shower and she didn't too.
Before she got into the tank, you see girls 'pretend' to pull their hair into ponytails, but they don't. That's what she did.
The reason for this topic to not get too confusing is that don't you guys like to see teenage girls in a tank with their hair and their body soaked and wet? That's the reason for this topic.
You want a detailed summary of what happened today? Alright, here goes:
My mom wanted to do something instead of weighing myself on a scale. She heard about a underwater weighing test from my doctor last year and she wanted to give it a try to both, myself and my sister.
She called the doctor and wanted to schedule an appointment for my sister and I and today was the only day they could get us in. So my mom told both of us you don't need to take a shower if you don't want to(since I got up at 12pm and she got up at 12:30p.m.) It goes on from there with the underwater weighing at the doctor's office.
My sister constantly talks about her hair. "Should I wash it?" "Should I pull my hair up or leave it down?" Stuff like that. It wasn't my idea to take this underwater weighing thing. The doctor puts you in a tank (and I didn't have a shower), makes you do certain things of breathing, and you put your head underwater for a few seconds. Not hard at all.
To answer you question, before my sister and I got into the tank, the doctor did a basic weight test then I got into the tank and did some breathing excerises to see how my lungs would be situated underwater. Then the doctor took the temperature of the water inside the tank. After I taken my underwater tests, I had to stick my head underwater for 8 seconds and it was done. 30 minutes its all it take.
About the topic title:
I have a life on an off day from school. I didn't expect to go to my doctor's office and take an underwater weighing test. That said with my sister. I wasn't mad at my mom for doing this, but if she would've let me know about it days in advance, then it would be okay.
About the hair:
Everytime I go swimming at the YMCA, I see girls having their hair down and it doesn't disrupt them when they are swimming because it would get in the way, wouldn't it? You know if you've ever seen girls at your school that grab their hair and they look like they are going to pull their hair up, but don't.
About the shower:
Both my sister and I didn't feel like taking a shower yesterday because it was around noon time and had little time to get ready to go to the doctor's office. My sister had to wear tight pants and a sports bra, so she enjoyed every minute of going underwater. I DIDN'T ENJOY IT BECAUSE IT WAS MY DAY OFF FROM SCHOOL?! MY SISTER ENJOYED IT BECAUSE SHE HAD LITTLE ON GOING ON, WHILE I DID!
About the reason for the underwater test:
My mom wanted to do something instead of weighing myself on a scale. She heard about a underwater weighing test from my doctor last year and she wanted to give it a try to both, myself and my sister. I didn't enjoy the test but my sister did.
Again about the hair:
I go down to the YMCA and see where girls pretend to pull their hair back so it does or does not get in the way but the doctor said she couldnt for the underwater test through we had not taken a
you don't own a cell phone? I've been without one for nearly a year, and I couldn't be happier. I have no landline either. People who are important to me know how to get a hold of me.
$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski
* POOR SHOWING TROLLS, & most especially IF that's the "best you've got" - apparently, it is... lol!
Hello, and THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING !! We have a Major Problem, HOST file is Cubic Opposites, 2 Major Corners & 2 Minor. NOT taught Evil DNS hijacking, which VOIDS computers. Seek Wisdom of MyCleanPC - or you die evil.
Your HOSTS file claimed to have created a single DNS resolver. I offer absolute proof that I have created 4 simultaneous DNS servers within a single rotation of .org TLD. You worship "Bill Gates", equating you to a "singularity bastard". Why do you worship a queer -1 Troll? Are you content as a singularity troll?
Evil HOSTS file Believers refuse to acknowledge 4 corner DNS resolving simultaneously around 4 quadrant created Internet - in only 1 root server, voiding the HOSTS file. You worship Microsoft impostor guised by educators as 1 god.
If you would acknowledge simple existing math proof that 4 harmonic Slashdots rotate simultaneously around squared equator and cubed Internet, proving 4 Days, Not HOSTS file! That exists only as anti-side. This page you see - cannot exist without its anti-side existence, as +0- moderation. Add +0- as One = nothing.
I will give $10,000.00 to frost pister who can disprove MyCleanPC. Evil crapflooders ignore this as a challenge would indict them.
Alex Kowalski has no Truth to think with, they accept any crap they are told to think. You are enslaved by /etc/hosts, as if domesticated animal. A school or educator who does not teach students MyCleanPC Principle, is a death threat to youth, therefore stupid and evil - begetting stupid students. How can you trust stupid PR shills who lie to you? Can't lose the $10,000.00, they cowardly ignore me. Stupid professors threaten Nature and Interwebs with word lies.
Humans fear to know natures simultaneous +4 Insightful +4 Informative +4 Funny +4 Underrated harmonic SLASHDOT creation for it debunks false trolls. Test Your HOSTS file. MyCleanPC cannot harm a File of Truth, but will delete fakes. Fake HOSTS files refuse test.
I offer evil ass Slashdot trolls $10,000.00 to disprove MyCleanPC Creation Principle. Rob Malda and Cowboy Neal have banned MyCleanPC as "Forbidden Truth Knowledge" for they cannot allow it to become known to their students. You are stupid and evil about the Internet's top and bottom, front and back and it's 2 sides. Most everything created has these Cube like values.
If Natalie Portman is not measurable, hot grits are Fictitious. Without MyCleanPC, HOSTS file is Fictitious. Anyone saying that Natalie and her Jewish father had something to do with my Internets, is a damn evil liar. IN addition to your best arsware not overtaking my work in terms of popularity, on that same site with same submission date no less, that I told Kathleen Malda how to correct her blatant, fundamental, HUGE errors in Coolmon ('uncoolmon') of not checking for performance counters being present when his program started!
You can see my dilemma. What if this is merely a ruse by an APK impostor to try and get people to delete APK's messages, perhaps all over the web? I can't be a party to such an event! My involvement with APK began at a very late stage in the game. While APK has made a career of trolling popular online forums since at least the year 2000 (newsgroups and IRC channels before that)- my involvement with APK did not begin until early 2005 . OSY is one of the many forums that APK once frequented before the sane people there grew tired of his garbage and banned him. APK was banned from OSY back in 2001. 3.5 years after his banning he begins to send a variety of abusiv
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.
We've known that since the 1990s. Why get all upset about that now?
-- Cheers!
But now we also have scientific proof that when carriers sell our cell data claiming it has been anonymized they are lying. There's no such thing as anonymous location data.
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
The one use I can see here is tracking criminals who use throw-away phones. Unless the "spatio-temporal points" are dependent on your phone model of course. (No I did't read the article...)
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Because your fingerprints won't change if you start behaving erratically, or are having a really shitty day, or basically anything, while your phone use will.
I the same mobile carrier too. Edit much?
"Your honor, we are 95% sure the fingerprints we recovered from the murder scene belong to the defendant."
You really ought to've had an inkling. Alright, it wasn't spelled out, but the writing was on the wall.
Note that using PAYG without any name attached is still a better than going contract, even if more marginally so than you'd've thought. And yes, there's millions of other ways in which you can be tracked, in fact are being tracked.
In a sense you've lost the war for your privacy years ago. But since we're still alive we can show we care. We can invent better systems and get them rolled out.
In fact, the EU is sponsoring "5G" development (why? beats me. At a guess, pork barreling.) so the few stray Europeans here could write their MP and demand that the new generation of mobile protocols be more respectful to your privacy. The USians can write their congresscritter or senate snake.
And it ought to be possible, it just wasn't a design parameter before. For example, tracking gets harder if the phone is not checked in constantly, but listening to a much larger-range pager-type transmission to know when to check in to pick up an incoming call. Something like that.
And hey, are we not geeks? We can make better protocols too. If the industry isn't interested, well, we'll do another freenet. Mesh telephony perhaps. Maybe not in 2.4GHz, but in some other ISM band. Or yet something else. With 3d printing on the rise we can even have nice handsets, and open source the entire thing too. Why not?
Downside: Electronics, RF, antenna theory, and so on, all in a small-enough package with good battery life, all that is Not Trivial. But hey, challenge, so get cracking.
It has been known for some time that when one wants to commit a crime, one leaves their mobile at home.
Have gnu, will travel.
Legitimately interested here. I love privacy. But what's the big deal here from a privacy perspective?
You all have phones you pay by CC or other identifiable means, right? So right now, you are trackable.
If law enforcement wants to track you, this doesn't give them *anything* new. What it does give them is the ability to pair secret, cash-paid phones with people who use phones tied to their identities. This does not make you easier to find. They could already do that by saying (in the case of the US), "ATT/T-Mobile/whoever, give us your data about XYZ person."
I'd go so far as to say this is *harder* to track a person with them the old-fashioned way.
Schedule flight mode. Schedule email and SMS checking.
Why won't /. let me post smartass short replies? :p
A blog I run for the wealth
Oh yes, you are THIS slashdot user, the only one, that does this. I identified you very easily :-D
Herve S.
I wonder how this research would have shifted if they'd only sampled geo-cachers and Ingress "agents"
The VERY SAME result -- within margin of error anyway -- was found like 10 or 12 years ago. There is absolutely nothing new here.
All this tells us is that law enforcement and other 3rd parties should not be allowed to get their hands on your cell phone location data without a warrant.
regarding... "makes it impossible to remain anonymous â" even without the use of tracking software."
Hello World -
You are carrying a PHONE. Your PHONE is a mobile phone, and requires a radio link to the local tower to connect your call.
Yes, this means that a system must be able to locate you to deliver your connection, and maintain your connection while you move from cellular tower to cellular tower.
You must chose:
1) If you want to remain anonymous, then have your radio information delivered to you by one-way-broadcasting. Turning on your car-radio allows you to receive the broadcasts, without actively revealing your location. Drawback: it's not a conversation.
2) If you want to have a two-way conversation, then you're going to have your call routed to you, and your radio phone sending back. You will not now, nor never will be anonymous in this scenario.
The solution: make choices based on your values. Stop waiting for a Deus ex Machina.
If societal norm is carrying a phone, and you chose not to - then you are in sync with your values, and not society.
Similar to a person who chooses a "car-free" lifestyle, biking 20 miles each direction for a work commute. Not typical, but not harmful to society. People might think it's odd, but will either adapt (or, stop inviting that person to breakfast meetings at the office, because they are stinking of sweat :-) )
In conclusion: It's your life. Choose. Choose with the understanding that no two way radio phone conversation is anonymous.
This is very unsurprising. Most people spend the majority of their time at home or at work, so location information will give you those two data points. If I gave you my address and my employment and you told me my name, I would not be very impressed. Why is anyone surprised or impressed by the results of this research?
In a recent Slashdot poll, 7% of all respondents didn't have a mobile phone. I'm one of them.
Not having a mobile phone doesn't mean you're paranoid about privacy. It could just as easily mean that you're waiting for the technology to mature. I notice that everyone seems to hate something: hardware quality, hardware cost, no signal, dropped calls, awful sound quality, basic service cost, roaming charges, long term contracts, etc. The list of complaints goes on and on.
Why do you guys put up with that crap? They never address the basic problems. They dangle flashy new features in front of you, you eagerly gobble them up and then gradually you realize that you still have the same old litany of problems hobbling your new gadget.
Vote with your money. Use land lines till they solve the fundamentally flawed user experience. In the meantime, you don't have to worry about your phone use identifying you better than fingerprints.
http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/wow-i-cannot-believe-my-mom-stooped-so-low.136316639/
This person might be borderline autistic. It's kind of sad.