How can you be monitored with GPS turned off?

For many people, security is really important. Although we talk about ourselves very easily on social networks, there is a part of life that we keep only for ourselves. What secrets we know, what connections we have and what places we go. It is not necessary for everyone to know these things.

Your mobile phone starts your work in almost any field, but many mobile users have problems controlling this tool, and sometimes it happens that the smartphone covers the whole life and there is no secret that is not stored in it. .

For this reason, Google on Android warns users about which applications access which parts of your mobile phone. In any case, you are the owner of this device and you can say whether the application has access to GPS or not.

GPS is so ingrained in our culture that we don’t even think about it anymore. If there is a restaurant that you have heard of but do not know the exact address, you go to Google Maps. You probably want a suggested route from it too, or if you don’t ask Google Maps, there is another app universe that does the routing. Don’t you want all these routes you go to be recorded? So it makes sense to turn off the GPS.

But what if we tell you that in this case you may still be under surveillance? What if you know that there is an application that can detect your speed, route and even the type of vehicle you are in with the GPS off?

This new tracking method was announced by Princeton University researchers. They managed to create an application that can find out your location with the existing sensors (accelerometer, magnetometer and barometer) in the smartphone and without any permission. This application can understand the IP address, time zone and even the status of the Internet connection (WiFi or mobile network).

These sensors are able to detect how fast a person is moving and in which direction he is changing direction. Slow movement in one direction is the concept of walking. If it is a little faster and there are 90 degree changes, it means that the person is driving. If it gets faster, it means that it is on a train or plane. The difference between the two can be recognized by using speed and air pressure.

After the application detects these things, it uses the information obtained by the sensors. The accelerometer tells you about your speed, the magnetometer tells you about your position relative to the north, and the barometer tells you about the air pressure in the area you are in. All this information that is gathered, is compared with public databases.

Compares the weather with The Weather Channel to get information about air pressure and see how high above sea level you are. Google Maps and US Geological Survey Maps provide other detailed information.

When all of this information is checked one by one, the application can predict your exact position and tell you with what device and in which direction you are moving. Different algorithms start working until the percentage of error reaches zero.

This application trusts the time zone that your mobile shows and matches the rest of the information with it so that the pieces of the puzzle fall into place one after the other. All this, without having to turn on the mobile GPS.

To test the app, the researchers tested it once in Philadelphia, but it took 12 trials and errors before the app could finally recognize it correctly.

But what if it was that simple to locate all of us who use mobile phones? There are two answers to this question: one is what actions should be taken as an individual and what should we all do to prevent it?

As a person, you should be very careful about the apps you download. This application required about 2000 lines of code to gain such high control over you, and really 2000 lines of code does not require much effort. The games and mobile applications that you have installed on your mobile these days have tens of thousands of lines of code, and putting 2000 lines of code in them is not a difficult task.

But this does not mean not downloading applications. Life without new applications is impossible for many of us. But be careful about the source from which you get the application and before installing, do a little research on its makers.

The researchers who made this application also have several suggestions to deal with this method. First of all, applications that want to use these sensors must apply. Therefore, you should pay more attention to the application request page, an issue that probably the least people pay attention to.

The next solution is to reduce the sampling rate by these sensors when they are not active. If the sampling rate of sensors is lower than the percentage required for tracking by applications, it will be impossible to monitor you.

And the safest and most illogical solution is to add hardware switches to the mobile phone to turn the sensors on and off. According to the procedure that the manufacturers of mobile phones have taken in the designs, it is unlikely that such an event will happen and we will see the on and off switch of the sensors.

Unfortunately, there is currently no perfect solution to prevent this from happening. Perhaps putting pressure on Google, Apple and other big powers is the best thing that can be done to prevent users from being monitored.