Paper Reading #17 : Privacy Risks Emerging from the Adoption of Innocuous Wearable Sensors in the Mobile Environment

Privacy Risks Emerging from the Adoption of Innocuous Wearable Sensors in the Mobile Environment

Chi '11

By:
Andrew Raij, Santosh Kumar, Animikh Ghosh, Mani Srivastava.

• Andrew Raij is currently a Post-Doctoral fellow at the University of Memphis  in the Wireless Sensors and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Lab.
• Santosh Kumar is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Memphis and in his capacity, leads the Wireless Sensors and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Lab.
• Animikh Ghosh is currently a Junior Research Associate at Infosys in India.
• Mani Srivastava is currently a professor in the ECEN and CSCE departments at UCLA.

Summary
Hypothesis
The authors of this paper are trying to figure out the possible negative outcomes of the popularity of wearable sensors. There's a concern about potential privacy violations.

Methods
The authors for this study used the scientific process for their experimentation. They had an experimental group of users and a control group. Both sets wore a set of sensors, however the control group had absolutely no data collected off their sensors while the experimental group had certain data that was collected from their sensors. At the end both groups were asked to fill out a survey to comment upon aspects of their behaviour while wearing sensors. The monitored group was later provided with results of their observation and then asked to fill out a survey regarding how the knowledge that they had been observed effected them.

Results
People were shown to be concerned about their privacy with a direct co-relation between the number of people who would have access to the data and the users concern about privacy. The statement that ignorance is bliss holds true here: the monitored group showed far more concern about the privacy matter after they had been showed the results of their observation period.

Contents
This paper used the scientific method to first and foremost figure out whether people even care about their privacy in regards to sensors. Once it was determined that they did care, more information was gathered regarding what precise topics were matters of privacy concern.

Discussion
I felt this was a useful paper in its ability to tell developers and researchers about how hard they need try and make their sensors and methods secure. If it had turned out that most people just straight up couldn't care less about their privacy, then this would allow researchers and developers to spend far more time on more goal oriented targets and less time trying to securely communicate information from the sensors to their objective, etc. While not a true "technological" study, this paper was still highly useful.