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What would one feasibly do with this data? I guess an app could tell if someone is holding their phone in their had, and maybe put together a pedometer bases on

What would one feasibly do with this data? I guess an app could tell if someone is holding their phone in their had, and maybe put together a pedometer bases on gyroscope input. Maybe a concern if a app has access to gyro input over a period of days. But as long as it's only for actively open apps and web pages I don't really see much harm.

saagarjha 8y ago
The gyroscope is a datapoint that can be used for fingerprinting. Plus it gives quite a bit of information about you: whether you are lying down, sitting, walking, etc.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  doesn't this assume the user is walking around with the page open, the front tab, and the phone unlocked for a reasonably long period? which websites do I spend enough time on for that to be true? I don't generally walk and read
  - colordrops 8y ago
    Browsers now have service workers that run in the background even when the browser UI isn't loaded.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > I don't generally walk and read That's how I spend 10-ish% of my time on Hacker News
JeremyBanks 8y ago
With sufficiently high-frequency gyroscope data, it is possible to infer what a user types in with moderate precision. In some cases, it has even been shown to be possible to recover coarse audio data from the surrounding environment. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=421691 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=421691 Browsers have added rate limiting to mitigate this threat. (Prior to that, my former team in Google Ads added our own rate limiting to the gyroscope API we provided for ads.) The risk now seems pretty minor, but I wouldn't be shocked if someone clever still managed to find some way to abuse it.
- gowld 8y ago
  > gyroscope API we provided for ads Whaaaa?
  - JeremyBanks 8y ago
    Yeaaaaah. Our clients thought it was super-cool to add distracting battery-destroying parallax effects to their mobile ads. :|
  - tomaskafka 8y ago
    What business model do you think Google has?
aw3c2 8y ago
Eavesdrop on audio: https://www.wired.com/2014/08/gyroscope-listening-hack/ https://www.wired.com/2014/08/gyroscope-listening-hack/ Know what you are typing: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128255-200-smartphone-jiggles-reveal-your-private-data/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128255-200-smartpho...
colordrops 8y ago
Facebook has a patent for using gyroscope data in conjunction with location to know who you are facing with other people around to enhance friend suggestions. You can also determine things like health and other physical characteristics, similar to gait detection.
- tsukikage 8y ago
  ...wait, how do you get orientation relative to things around you (rather than just your own previous orientation and gravity) from just gyro/accelerometer data + location? If you do have some source of absolute orientation, like a compass, surely you just use that and don't need the gyro.
  - gugagore 8y ago
    That's a good question. I suppose it may be possible to use GPS data to estimate the phone's absolute heading. I just took a quick look at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Detecting_device_orientation https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Detecting_d..., and it seems to provide orientation, and not angular velocities. So it could also be that browser implementations fuse magnetometer and inertial sensors to produce the orientation estimate. Is there another gyro API?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - jefftk 8y ago
    Maybe the compass gives you noisy absolute information which is ok, but combined with accurate relative information from the gyroscope and accelerometer is better?

saagarjha 8y ago

The gyroscope is a datapoint that can be used for fingerprinting. Plus it gives quite a bit of information about you: whether you are lying down, sitting, walking, etc.

tokyodude 8y ago
doesn't this assume the user is walking around with the page open, the front tab, and the phone unlocked for a reasonably long period? which websites do I spend enough time on for that to be true? I don't generally walk and read
- colordrops 8y ago
  Browsers now have service workers that run in the background even when the browser UI isn't loaded.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > I don't generally walk and read That's how I spend 10-ish% of my time on Hacker News

JeremyBanks 8y ago

With sufficiently high-frequency gyroscope data, it is possible to infer what a user types in with moderate precision. In some cases, it has even been shown to be possible to recover coarse audio data from the surrounding environment. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=421691 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=421691 Browsers have added rate limiting to mitigate this threat. (Prior to that, my former team in Google Ads added our own rate limiting to the gyroscope API we provided for ads.) The risk now seems pretty minor, but I wouldn't be shocked if someone clever still managed to find some way to abuse it.

gowld 8y ago
> gyroscope API we provided for ads Whaaaa?
- JeremyBanks 8y ago
  Yeaaaaah. Our clients thought it was super-cool to add distracting battery-destroying parallax effects to their mobile ads. :|
- tomaskafka 8y ago
  What business model do you think Google has?

aw3c2 8y ago

Eavesdrop on audio: https://www.wired.com/2014/08/gyroscope-listening-hack/ https://www.wired.com/2014/08/gyroscope-listening-hack/ Know what you are typing: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128255-200-smartphone-jiggles-reveal-your-private-data/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128255-200-smartpho...

colordrops 8y ago

Facebook has a patent for using gyroscope data in conjunction with location to know who you are facing with other people around to enhance friend suggestions. You can also determine things like health and other physical characteristics, similar to gait detection.

tsukikage 8y ago
...wait, how do you get orientation relative to things around you (rather than just your own previous orientation and gravity) from just gyro/accelerometer data + location? If you do have some source of absolute orientation, like a compass, surely you just use that and don't need the gyro.
- gugagore 8y ago
  That's a good question. I suppose it may be possible to use GPS data to estimate the phone's absolute heading. I just took a quick look at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Detecting_device_orientation https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Detecting_d..., and it seems to provide orientation, and not angular velocities. So it could also be that browser implementations fuse magnetometer and inertial sensors to produce the orientation estimate. Is there another gyro API?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- jefftk 8y ago
  Maybe the compass gives you noisy absolute information which is ok, but combined with accurate relative information from the gyroscope and accelerometer is better?