Security researchers from five US universities have teamed up to demonstrate how motion sensors can be used to spy on Android phones.called ear spythe proof-of-concept security scares they developed are piggybacked on the vibrations produced by your phone’s ear speaker, which are detected by a motion sensor.
OnePlus 9 EarSpy Distribution
However, this so-called side-channel attack can be easily thwarted simply by turning down the volume on your earphones. This makes it harder for motion sensors to pick up viable reverberations that may later be attributed to gender, caller identification, or private speech.
With Android 13, Google is trying to prevent such privacy backdoors by asking permission to collect sensor data at a sampling rate of 200 Hz or higher. However, at 200 Hz, the accuracy of the selected signal drops by only 10%, so it’s not really a preventative measure, but at the standard 400-500 Hz sampling rate, the motion sensor response to speech recognition is nearly impossible.
