Malware Tracks a Smartphone Without Location Data
The way your smartphone uses power provides a simple way to track it, say computer scientists who have developed an app to prove it.
Nobody wants to think they are being tracked evenhough they carry the technology to do so in their own pockets. That's why the Android and iOS operating system prevent third party apps from accessing location data without the specific permission of the user. But it turns out that malware can track you anyway, without this data.
Malicious software can determine the position of a smartphone simply by measuring the way it uses the power. The technique is straightforward in theory. The idea is that a smartphone's power usage depends largely on the distance from the nearest base station. As a user moves, this distance changes, increasing or decreasing the power needed to communicate with a base station. So the power usage profile is strongly correlated with the movement of the phone, or in other words, with the route taken by its owner. Given several different potential routes, the power usage profile should reveal which the user has taken.
So what can be done to prevent this kind of spying? One option is to prevent apps gaining access to power usage data at all, although this is probably overkill. A better option is to give apps access to power usage data other than those involved in radio communication.
That should be straightforward to implement, if Android or iOS can be bothered.
