Molecular Traces On Your iPhone Screen Reveal A Scary Amount Of Personal Information

Your iPhone contains a huge amount of information about who you are and what sort of lifestyle you lead ― but not just in the contents of your apps and photos. Even on its physical surface, your phone contains information that can paint a fairly complete picture of your lifestyle.  By sampling the molecular traces left on smartphones, a group of scientists was able to create “lifestyle sketches” of each phone’s user, including information about diet, use of personal hygiene products, use of pharmaceuticals, health status and locations visited. Molecular traces “will reveal the types of soaps, lotions, shampoo, make-up, food ― such as vegetarian versus meat-eater or spicy foods ― type of drinks, medications, even materials of clothing one uses,” Dr. Pieter Dorrestein, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and the study’s lead author, told The Huffington Post. “Because our reference databases and analysis infrastructure, we can right now only annotate 2 percent of the data. But as this knowledge increases, the resolution of lifestyle analysis will also improve.” This method of sampling could one day be used in a range of real-life scenarios, including airport screening, criminal profiling, and monitoring of medication adherence ― and that’s just the beginning.  For the study, published Nov. 14 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the re...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news