Rachel Feltman

We may not understand the full impact that wearable computers -- fitness trackers like the Fitbit, and augmented-reality devices like Google Glass, for example -- have on our privacy. In fact, one of the first computer scientists to work on wearable tech says we should be more wary.

Alex “Sandy” Pentland, director of the MIT Human Dynamics Lab, is an expert on the intersection of society and big data. Thanks to the revelations by Edward Snowden, many people now realize that their metadata (e.g., not the contents of your email, but the time and place you sent it from) is often up for grabs, regardless of how many privacy barriers they’ve put in place.

But Pentland doesn’t think we’re scared enough. Pentland wants us to be afraid of data collection, not of wearables themselves. Wearables, he told The Verge, will also allow us to be more social and productive, and supplement our memories with easily accessible information. We need them -- but we also need data privacy laws to evolve before the technology becomes ubiquitous.

The solution, Pentland said, is to make individuals the masters of their own data. “That’s the most important thing,” he said. “Control of the data.”

Sensors in your phone that collect seemingly harmless data could leave you vulnerable to cyberattack, according to new research. And saying no to apps that ask for your location is not enough to prevent the tracking of your device.

A new study has found evidence that accelerometers -- which sense motion in your smartphone and are used for applications from pedometers to gaming -- leave “unique, trackable fingerprints” that can be used to identify you and monitor your phone.

Here’s how it works, according to University of Illinois electrical and computer engineering professor Romit Roy Choudhury and his team: Tiny imperfections during the manufacturing process make a unique fingerprint on your accelerometer data. The researchers compared it to cutting out sugar cookies with a cookie cutter -- they may look the same, but each one is slightly, imperceptibly different. When that data is sent to the cloud for processing, your phone’s particular signal can be used to identify you. In other words, the same data that helps you control Flappy Bird can be used to pinpoint your location. Choudhury’s team was able to identify individual phones with 96% accuracy.