Every time we touch something, we leave a mark on it. For this reason, a team of scientists from the Skaggs School of Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of California in San Diego (USA) have examined all those chemicals, molecules … that we leave on mobile phones to see what information could be obtained from them. The results are surprising and have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Our mobile gives us away. What we eat, the medications we take, the beauty products we use … all of this leaves a molecular trace that researchers have been able to glimpse to reconstruct the lifestyle of a group of people . The analysis of these traces has allowed to know the health status of the participants, what is their diet, their state of health, what places they have visited or what are their favorite hygiene and beauty products. Exposed because of our inseparable technological partner.
To recover this valuable and private information, the experts used the mobile phones of 39 volunteers . They cleaned organic and chemical debris from the devices and their hands and then began the process of obtaining data, being able to reconstruct with great detail, the “personalized lifestyle” of each participant , to the point of detailing that some had used anti-inflammatory creams, antidepressant drugs, consumed coffee or beer, used antifungal skin treatments or products to stop hair loss.
According to experts, the areas of the mobile that accumulate more microbes and molecules due to our daily contact are the sides (due to turning the device on and off) and the front buttons, although the fingerprint appears scattered throughout the phone.
This discovery could have many applications such as, for example, closing the fence of criminal profiles thanks to the fingerprints that suspects leave on mobile phones or even for airport control and security.
