Technologies are presented herein in support of system and methods for user recognition using motion sensor data. Embodiments of the present invention concern a system and method for capturing motion sensor data using motion sensors of a mobile device and characterizing the motion sensor data into features for user recognition. The motion sensor data of a user is collected by the motion sensors of a mobile device in the form of a motion signal. One or more sets of features are extracted from the motion signal and a subset of discriminative features are then selected. The subset of features is analyzed, and a classification score is generated to classify the user as a genuine user or an imposter user.