Identifying Smartphone Users Based on Activities in Daily Living Using Deep Neural Networks

Abstract

Smartphones have become ubiquitous, allowing people to perform various tasks anytime and anywhere. As technology continues to advance, smartphones can now sense and connect to networks, providing context-awareness for different applications. Many individuals store sensitive data on their devices like financial credentials and personal information due to the convenience and accessibility. However, losing control of this data poses risks if the phone gets lost or stolen. While passwords, PINs, and pattern locks are common security methods, they can still be compromised through exploits like smudging residue from touching the screen. This research explored leveraging smartphone sensors to authenticate users based on behavioral patterns when operating the device. The proposed technique uses a deep learning model called DeepResNeXt, a type of deep residual network, to accurately identify smartphone owners through sensor data efficiently. Publicly available smartphone datasets were used to train the suggested model and other state-of-the-art networks to conduct user recognition. Multiple experiments validated the effectiveness of this framework, surpassing previous benchmark models in this area with a top F1-score of 98.96%.