Reference Information
Privacy Risks Emerging from the Adoption of Innocuous Wearable Sensors in the Mobile Environment
Andrew Raij, Animikh Ghosh, Santosh Kumar, Mani Srivastava
Presented at CHI 2011, May 7-12, 2011, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Author Bios
Privacy Risks Emerging from the Adoption of Innocuous Wearable Sensors in the Mobile Environment
Andrew Raij, Animikh Ghosh, Santosh Kumar, Mani Srivastava
Presented at CHI 2011, May 7-12, 2011, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Author Bios
- Andrew Raij is a Post-Doc Fellow in the Wireless Sensors and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Lab at the University of Memphis.
- Santosh Kumar is currently an associate professor at the University of Memphis and leads the WiSeMANet Lab.
- Animikh Ghosh is currently a Junior Research Associate at Infosys Labs in India and spent time as a researcher in the WiSeMANet Lab at the University of Memphis.
- Mani Srivastava is currently a professor in the Electrical Engineering Dept. and Computer Science Dept. at UCLA.
Summary
Hypothesis
With wearable sensors becoming more popular, there is an increasing concern for information about potentially private behaviors becoming more accessible and more easily abused.
Methods
The authors administered a survey to users who had their data stored, people who did not have data stored, and people with stored data who were informed of the extent of the stored data to determine their comfort levels with the possibility of data compromises. The people with stored data thus took the survey twice, after having participated in the cooperating study of AutoSense that stored their data. The participants were college students. The survey measured their level of concern about data disclosure both with and without data restrictions and abstractions. Participants were informed of the informed data through the Aha visualization system.
Results
Privacy concerns between Groups NS and S before the study were minimal but Group S after the study had significantly higher concerns and did not like the idea of someone having access to that data. The impact restrictions and abstractions had on the concerns showed what data is most sensitive when grouped with other data. For example, the highest concern level was shown when physical and temporal data was available making the times and locations of the user visible. Adding timestamps in general always increased concern. Participants also showed higher levels of concern when asked how they felt regarding releasing the data linked by identity to the general public compared to releasing the data anonymously.
Hypothesis
With wearable sensors becoming more popular, there is an increasing concern for information about potentially private behaviors becoming more accessible and more easily abused.
Methods
The authors administered a survey to users who had their data stored, people who did not have data stored, and people with stored data who were informed of the extent of the stored data to determine their comfort levels with the possibility of data compromises. The people with stored data thus took the survey twice, after having participated in the cooperating study of AutoSense that stored their data. The participants were college students. The survey measured their level of concern about data disclosure both with and without data restrictions and abstractions. Participants were informed of the informed data through the Aha visualization system.
Results
Privacy concerns between Groups NS and S before the study were minimal but Group S after the study had significantly higher concerns and did not like the idea of someone having access to that data. The impact restrictions and abstractions had on the concerns showed what data is most sensitive when grouped with other data. For example, the highest concern level was shown when physical and temporal data was available making the times and locations of the user visible. Adding timestamps in general always increased concern. Participants also showed higher levels of concern when asked how they felt regarding releasing the data linked by identity to the general public compared to releasing the data anonymously.
Contents
After establishing that there is increasing need for privacy awareness, the authors of the paper performed an experiment to find out how much people actually care about what sort of information they might be providing, even when the information was collected just through basic sensors.
Discussion
I think the researchers proved their hypothesis that people do not want certain information regarding tracking exposed to the public but interestingly only when they have a stake in the data being released. This study can be used by developers in the future in determining what data to keep sensitive and more importantly what to tell users so that they know exactly what is being recorded before consenting to anything.
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