On Beyond Creepy: Trace Chemicals Left on Your Phone Can Determine What Medicines You Take and What Foods You Eat

It's time for someone to write a new dystopian book: "2084"

Yikes.

Move over, George Orwell. You were bush league when compared to this.

“Using a chemical composite recovered from a swab of a phone, as a representative personal belonging, we can provide insights into personal lifestyle profile by predicting the kind of beauty product the individual uses, the food he/she eats, the medications he/she takes, or the places he/she has been.”

That’s the finding of a report entitled “Lifestyle Chemistries from Phones for Individual Profiling”, which in 2016 (that old!) appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Hardly the National Enquirer!)

Have a look: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/48/E7645.full

Oh, and please pass the alcohol wipes.

(Then again – would wipes even help?)