Scientists say that grime and smudges on your smartphone can reveal important information about your identity and lifestyle. These include your sex, what you eat, and even the places you have visited recently as well as what medications you are on.

A team from the University of California, San Diego suggest that this chemical signature can be used to identify people in airports, medical and clinical trials, and could be used as forensic evidence and in environmental studies.

Researchers say that these chemical signatures accumulate on your phone every day. These microbes can reportedly thrive on the surface of a phone for months. In this new study, scientists sought to analyze these microbes on your smartphone to identify these chemical signatures.

However, this will still not be considered as substantial evidence like fingerprints or DNA specimens.

According to the lead author of the study, Pieter Dorrestein from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, this technology could be crucial in the forensic world when fingerprints and DNA sequencing cannot help identify someone.

With this new chemical signature technology, scientists can correctly identify a person with 90 percent accuracy.

During the study, 39 participants were examined along with their smartphones as researchers obtained microbe samples from the surface of their phones, including the participants' fingers and hands.

Scientists used a mass spectrometer to analyze the molecular makeup of each sample and identified them with an existing chemical database. The team discovered that these samples from the smartphones could easily reveal information about an individual, including medication such as antidepressants and antifungal skin cream, even eye drop medications.

Apart from medication, researchers also detected caffeine, citrus and spices like black pepper and chili. Mosquito repellents and sunscreen were also identified.