There's a new way that advertisers could track you around the web, andyou might be surprised about where the tracking data would come from:your device's accelerometer. According to SFGate, security researcherHristo Bojinov has discovered a way to distinguish individual devicessimply by looking at data their accelerometers provide to webpages.Because accelerometers work imperfectly, they all display a uniqueresult when idle — that result, Bojinov says, is enough to track adevice around the web. THIS IS FAR FROM THE ONLY TRACKING TOOLADVERTISERS HAVE A website would just need to implement a small pieceof code in order to begin tracking a device this way, reports SFGate.Though Bojinov can't say for certain whether anyone is already doingthis, he says he'd be surprised if an advertiser wasn't alreadyexploring the possibility. To see how effective the method is, you canview your own mobile device's accelerometer footprint at a website setup by Stanford, where Bojinov is a PhD candidate in computer science.While you'll have to actively flip the phone around in order to make itwork, that reportedly wouldn't be necessary for actual tracking.Bojinov's research should be published in the coming months, SFGatereports. But while he may describe a surprising and eerie way to trackdevices, it's far from the only tool advertisers have for tracking:even outside of cookies, advertisers can distinguish between differentpeople just by looking at information their browsers always hand over,like what fonts they have access to and what operating system is beingused. That means accelerometer tracking may not be needed, but asadvertisers look for better ways to follow people around the mobile webon your smartphone

There's a new way that advertisers could track you around the web, and you might be surprised about where the tracking data would come from.