Hackers Are Finding New Ways to Circumvent Privacy
Hackers Are Finding New Ways to Circumvent Privacy
June 27, 2016
The Jerusalem Post — It’s no secret that the phones we carry can track our location, taking note of our every move. That’s why some who are concerned with privacy might block their apps from accessing their GPS.
But a group at Stanford University working for Rafael Advanced Defense Systems discovered that they could predict people’s location with 90 percent accuracy based solely on their battery usage.
Prof. Yuval Elovici
“It’s very hard to keep privacy on a mobile,” says Prof. Yuval Elovici, director of BGU’s Cyber Security Research Center. Prof. Elovici recently participated in a cyber security panel discussion at the IEEE Experts in Technology and Policy conference (ETAP) in Tel Aviv.
Hackers and companies alike are increasingly able to discern identifying information about people, such as their gender, based on indirect data.
“If you knew that your life expectancy could be derived from your information, you might not give permission for it,” Prof. Elovici says.
More troubling still, advances in big data analytics over time mean that information that can’t yield any identifiable results today may be useful for interested parties tomorrow.
At the ETAP meeting, experts called for a plan to bridge the gap between technology and regulation. In the meantime, however, Prof. Elovici warns that vigilance alone can only get people so far.
“We developed a tracker that can, to a 95 percent accuracy, identify the level of alcohol in your blood,” he says. “I never imagined that when I allow this information to be collected about myself, it could be used in any way.”
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