So you can find it through the wifi network

So you can find it through the wifi network

Researchers are able to record the location each time a particular device sends or receives data packets wirelessly

The end of roaming in the European Union has ended, in part, with the hunt for public Wi-Fi networks. A fast, simple and, at times, very dangerous free connection. Experts remember not to log on to pages such as the bank or email for the possible theft of credentials.

However, wifi access records also allow knowing the exact location of a person. This has been demonstrated by Purdue University, which managed to find out the preferred places of its students by controlling the connections to its Wi-Fi network.

In an interview published in VentureBeat, the researchers explained that "the goal was to use user data to create a model of user activities, with their different locations and schedules, and then make predictions."

In their study, the scientists relied on the location of the Wi-Fi network when a particular device sent or received data packets wirelessly.

The study focused on the first-year students of the 2016-2017 school year. In total 376GB of information was recorded and allowed to know all the movements. Through several learning models, researchers at Purdue University have been able to predict accuracy between 31% and 85% of the 3 most visited locations for each student.

However, the success rate of the predictions increases when the data linked to the events linked to the subjects are removed from the study and reduced in the case of less active users.