https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from IMDEA Networks Institute Researchers at IMDEA Networks Institute, together with European partners, have found that tire pressure sensors in modern cars can unintentionally expose drivers to tracking. Over a ten-week study, they collected signals from more than 20,000 vehicles, revealing a hidden privacy risk and highlighting the need for stronger security measures in future vehicle sensor systems. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-car-sensors-track.html Security Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:00:05 EST news691252054 A research team at IMDEA Networks Institute has developed a coordination system called the Cord-Approx strategy that significantly cuts the time drivers spend searching for on-street parking. The study "Reducing Street Parking Search Time via Smart Assignment Strategies" tested the approach in detailed simulations of Madrid using a real traffic dataset. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-significantly-cities.html Software Tue, 07 Oct 2025 11:37:04 EDT news679055821 5G has been part of our lives and the market for several years, while the industry is already looking ahead to its successor, 6G. But can we say it is fully implemented? https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-5g-deployed-doesnt-faster-4g.html Telecom Wed, 24 Sep 2025 05:00:03 EDT news677906920 Researchers from IMDEA Networks, in collaboration with Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, IMDEA Software Institute, and the University of Calgary, have conducted the first large-scale study—"Your Signal, Their Data: An Empirical Privacy Analysis of Wireless-scanning SDKs in Android"—on how certain Android mobile applications use a device's WiFi and Bluetooth connections to track users' movements in their daily lives, thereby violating their privacy. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-07-reveals-mobile-apps-track-users.html Telecom Tue, 29 Jul 2025 10:09:57 EDT news673002592 An international research collaboration has recently uncovered a potential privacy abuse involving Meta and the Russian tech giant Yandex. They found that native Android apps—including Facebook, Instagram, and several Yandex apps such as Maps, Navi, Browser, and Search—silently listen on fixed local ports on mobile devices to de-anonymize users' browsing habits without consent. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-06-privacy-abuse-involving-meta-yandex.html Business Tue, 03 Jun 2025 11:25:05 EDT news668168699 A recent study titled "Gaming on the Edge: Performance Issues of Distributed Online Gaming," published at the IFIP International Conference on Networking 2024, proposes an innovative model to enhance the experience of online gaming, particularly on mobile devices. Led by an international team of researchers—including Professors Marco Ajmone and Vincenzo Mancuso from IMDEA Networks—the study explores how edge computing can transform Gaming as a Service (GaaS) by significantly improving performance. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-01-future-mobile-gaming-latency-fun.html Internet Thu, 30 Jan 2025 12:54:02 EST news657464041 Floating wind power offers enormous potential for deepwater offshore energy development. However, the management and secure exchange of data between stakeholders represents a key challenge for its evolution. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-12-cryptographic-protocol-enables-energy-sector.html Energy & Green Tech Mon, 23 Dec 2024 03:00:02 EST news653912642 Advertisers systematically pay more to show online ads to women than to men, especially in highly developed nations, according to research from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and IMDEA Networks. This gender-based price discrimination in digital marketing, known as the "pink tax," contributes to increasing gender inequality, as women are charged more to access similar products and services. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-reveals-hidden-pink-tax-digital.html Social Sciences Wed, 10 Jul 2024 14:11:03 EDT news639839461 Disinformation is a growing phenomenon on digital platforms, significantly impacting social, political, and economic events. It has long posed a threat to freedom and democracy. However, it is now even more pressing due to the speed at which campaigns spread through digital media. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-05-algorithm-disinformation-social-media.html Computer Sciences Fri, 31 May 2024 13:45:03 EDT news636381901 A team of researchers from the Institute IMDEA Software, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and NEC Laboratories Europe has introduced a novel framework that promises to improve the efficiency and practicality of verifiable computing. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-04-verification-techniques-ai-image.html Security Mon, 29 Apr 2024 14:59:55 EDT news633621592 An international team of researchers, led by IMDEA Networks and Northeastern University in collaboration with NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, IMDEA Software, University of Calgary, and the International Computer Science Institute, has unveiled findings on the security and privacy challenges posed by the ever-growing prevalence of opaque and technically complex Internet of Things (IoT) devices in smart homes. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-reveals-alarming-privacy-threats-smart.html Consumer & Gadgets Thu, 26 Oct 2023 15:20:07 EDT news617552402 New research conducted by IMDEA Networks Institute in collaboration with the University of Surrey, UPV, and King's College London has shown that there is a general downward trend in the popular artificial intelligence (AI) platform ChatGPT to take direct stances on controversial topics, whether providing agreement or disagreement, or an affirmative or negative response. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-chatgpt-tackles-controversial-issues-bias.html Machine learning & AI Thu, 28 Sep 2023 16:10:57 EDT news615136254 Researchers Vahid Ghafouri and Guillermo Suárez de Tangil from IMDEA Networks Institute have collaborated on a research led by Waleed Iqbal, Gareth Tyson, and Ignacio Castro from Queen Mary University of London that analyzes how real-world inequalities manifest themselves in social networks. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-reveals-internet-income.html Social Sciences Mon, 31 Jul 2023 15:22:46 EDT news610035763 We are in a fascinating era where even low-resource devices, such as Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, can use deep learning algorithms to tackle complex problems such as image classification or natural language processing (the branch of artificial intelligence that deals with giving computers the ability to understand spoken and written language in the same way as humans). https://techxplore.com/news/2022-10-algorithm-maximizes-iot-sensor-inference.html Computer Sciences Tue, 25 Oct 2022 14:23:01 EDT news585926578 Researchers Margarita Capretto, Martin Ceresa (IMDEA Software), Antonio Fernández Anta (IMDEA Networks), Antonio Russo (IMDEA Networks) and César Sánchez (IMDEA Software) presented Setchain, a new data structure that improves the scalability of blockchains, allowing a greater number of transactions per block, which leads to a reduction in risk and costs for users, at the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain. https://techxplore.com/news/2022-09-setchain-application-thousand-transactions-minute.html Business Mon, 26 Sep 2022 12:57:08 EDT news583415825 Researchers Matthias Götze (TU Berlin), Srdjan Matic (IMDEA Software), Costas Iordanou (Cyprus University of Technology), Georgios Smaragdakis (TU Delft), and Nikolaos Laoutaris (IMDEA Networks) have presented a paper at the Web Science Conference: "Measuring Web Cookies in Governmental Websites," in which they investigate governmental websites of G20 countries and evaluate to what extent visits to these sites are tracked by third parties. https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-governmental-websites-cookies-third-party-trackers.html Internet Tue, 05 Jul 2022 09:07:27 EDT news576230843 A team of researchers, led by Domenico Giustiniano, Research Associate Professor at IMDEA Networks Institute, Madrid, has presented important advances in the creation of sustainable wireless communication systems. This represents a new step towards making battery-free devices a reality, through the convergence of two emerging technologies: LiFi and radio frequency (RF) backscatter. Potential applications include smart homes, smart cities, and smart agriculture. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-10-wireless-devices-batteries-sustainability.html Electronics & Semiconductors Thu, 28 Oct 2021 13:15:01 EDT news554645698 Future high-speed communication networks based on millimeter-wave (30-300GHz) technology will be more robust and efficient in delivering extremely high speed, high quality video, and multimedia content and services thanks to the results of a ground-breaking research project. The recently-concluded project was a collaboration between Huawei Technologies and IMDEA Networks Institute, the Madrid-based research body pioneering many technologies that are being deployed in the new 5G landscape. https://phys.org/news/2019-04-future-millimeter-networks-features-high.html Telecom Tue, 23 Apr 2019 10:10:01 EDT news475231676 The 4-year TIGRE5-CM project, coordinated by IMDEA Networks Institute in Madrid, delivers an architecture designed for future mobile networks, based on the SDN (Software Defined Networking) paradigm. TIGRE5-CM simplifies deployment, configuration and management in both the access and core networks, integrating cutting-edge technologies. https://phys.org/news/2019-04-low-cost-future-network-architecture-mobile.html Internet Mon, 01 Apr 2019 10:03:27 EDT news473331801 Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the IMDEA Networks Institute, in collaboration with the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) at Berkeley (USA) and Stony Brook University of New York (USA), have carried out a study that encompasses 82,000 pre-installed apps in more than 1,700 devices manufactured by 214 brands, revealing the existence of a complex ecosystem of manufacturers, mobile operators, app developers and providers, with a wide network of relationships between them. This includes specialized organizations in user monitoring and tracking and in providing Internet advertising. Many of the pre-installed apps facilitate access to privileged data and resources, without the average user being aware of their presence or being able to uninstall them. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-pre-installed-software-android-devices-privacy.html Consumer & Gadgets Wed, 20 Mar 2019 08:08:22 EDT news472288096 Graphene monolayers can be epitaxially grown on many single-crystal metal surfaces under ultra-high vacuum. On one side, these monolayers protect highly reactive metallic surfaces from contaminants, but on the other side, the piling of the layers as graphitic carbon blocks the activity of transition metal catalysts. The inertness of the graphite and the physical blockage of the active sites prevents chemical reactions occurring on the metal surface. https://phys.org/news/2018-12-foe-friend-graphene-catalyzes-c-c.html Nanomaterials Mon, 17 Dec 2018 07:20:19 EST news464253542 There are currently millions of heavily underutilized devices in the world. The storage, networking, sensing and computational power of laptops, smartphones, routers and base stations grows with each new version and product release. Why not put all those extra gigabytes of memory and those powerful processing units to work collaboratively and expand the services available to all of us? https://phys.org/news/2018-09-underused-smart-devices.html Telecom Wed, 19 Sep 2018 09:25:38 EDT news456567932