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Your smartphone batteries may be spying on you!
Beware, your smartphone baterries can be used to sneakily track you even if you try to hide.
New Delhi: Beware, your smartphone baterries can be used to sneakily track you even if you try to hide.
A new study by security researchers reveals how a feature of HTML5 specification, the technology used to let people read sites on the web, can be used to track you across the web as well.
Ideally, HTML5's battery API allows websites to get information about the battery life of a smartphone or laptop that's visiting a website.
The battery Status API is currently supported in Firefox, Opera and Chrome browsers and was introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, the organisation that dictates many web’s standards) in 2012, with the aim of helping websites conserve users’ energy.
It provides the amount of battery a user has, and an estimate of the time remaining until the battery dies, but the same information can be used to track browsers online.
The researchers - Lukasz Olejnik, Gunes Acar, Claude Castelluccia and Claudia Diaz- also warned that the battery Status API could help websites to recognise you by your battery even if you use a VPN.