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Did you know: You are being stalked every second?

Speed News Desk | Updated on: 3 November 2017, 10:54 IST
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How would you feel if you get to know that someone is following your every single movement, what if someone keeps a tab on every single action that you make, what if somebody knows when you pick your phone from the table and then put it back. What will you do if you get to know that somebody is following you even when you are on a bus? What will you do if you get to know that you could be tracked when you walk in a bus or when you sit down.

Well if you are wondering who is following your every single moment, then it is none other than your own phone. The phone you are using can disclose your every single physical activity that you are doing to your phone and your application. Your phone can tell whether you are standing or you are sitting. Your phone can even tell if you are multitasking.

Last week, Reddit and DuckDuckGo discussed an Android permission that is called “Activity Recognition” according to which the developers can easily work-out what a person is doing at any given time.

There are almost 11 hidden features of Google Chrome that we bet you don't even know exist. Although the 'Activity recognition' is not at all new, but the problem is that the reaction that came upon Reddit and DuckDuckGo posts clearly suggest that the users are not at all aware about it.

“The Activity Recognition API is built on top of the sensors available in a device,” says Google.

“Device sensors provide insights into what users are currently doing. However, with dozens of signals from multiple sensors and slight variations in how people do things, detecting what users are doing is not easy.

“The Activity Recognition API automatically detects activities by periodically reading short bursts of sensor data and processing them using machine learning models,” it added.

The software can even tell the developers that whether your phone is on the table, on the ground, or in a vehicle such car-bicycle, bus, plane or train. The developer can also decode whether you are walking in the train while the train is moving or not. And all this is possible because of “relative to gravity”.

The Activity Recognition is commonly known as API and the relativity of its finding that it tells about the users totally depends upon its rating out of 100. If the number is higher the result is approximately more correct and if the number is lower then the finding is not very much reliable.

The API automatically gives its findings a likelihood rating out of 100. The higher the number, the more confident it is that you’re actually doing what it believes you’re doing.

You won't believe but the app can even monitor your heartbeat, what makes the matter worse is that the API is categorized in the other category of permissions and neither you can deny it nor you can disable it. Well, it might be possible that the app can be useful but it is creepy too.
“A common use case is that an application wants to monitor activities in the background and perform an action when a specific activity is detected,” says Google.

Well if you want to find out how to disable this app or deny the permissions then you have to check every single application in your phone one by one then after finding it, you can uninstall it. Yes, the process is long and laborious but it is totally worth the efforts.

First published: 3 November 2017, 10:54 IST