Researchers from Stanford University have discovered a vulnerability that would allow smartphone location tracking by how the phone’s power is used, MIT Technology Review reports. Yan Michalevsky and a team said, “Our approach enables known route identification, real-time tracking and identification of a new route by only analyzing the phone’s power consumption.” A phone’s power usage depends on how far away it is from a base station. As a user moves, that power use changes in relation to a base station. The team’s work, the report states, demonstrates how easily privacy can be undermined and serves as “a warning that whatever steps are taken to protect personal data, there will always be ways that it can leak unexpectedly.”
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