Location tracking using smartphone accelerometer and magnetometer traces

We demonstrate a breach in smartphone location privacy through the accelerometer and magnetometer's footprints. The merits or otherwise of explicitly permissioned location sensors are not the point of this paper. Instead, our proposition is that other non-location-sensitive sensors can track users accurately when the users are in motion, as in travelling on public transport, such as trains, buses, and taxis.

Through field trials, we provide evidence that high accuracy location tracking can be achieved even via non-location-sensitive sensors for which no access authorisation is required from users on a smartphone.