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

References
Privacy Risks Emerging from the Adoption of Innocuous Wearable Sensors in the Mobile Environment by Andrew Raij, Santosh Kumar, Animikh Ghosh, and Mani Srivastava.   Published in the CHI '11 Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems.


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 WiSe MANet 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 researchers divided participants into two groups.  One would be monitored for several days and have some basic information recorded, the other group acted as a control group and had no such monitoring.  Both groups filled out a survey before the study began to indicate their feelings on certain aspects of potentially private behavior.  The group that was monitored for a few days was shown the results of the observation period and given some of the conclusions that were drawn from these results.  They were then asked to fill out another survey with their new perspective.
Results
The researchers found that people were least concerned about privacy when the data was not directly and obviously their own.  The group that was not monitored expressed a lower level of concern than the group that was monitored.  Also, the group that was monitored expressed an increased level of concern after the observation period had ended and they were able to see the results.  The researchers also noted that knowing who would have access to the data made a significant difference in the amount that people would care about privacy.  People tended to be more worried about data being available to a larger number of people, or the public in general.  Participants also were more concerned when a timeline or schedule of behavior was established.  Overall, the two most important areas of concern to people were those involving stress and conversation periods.
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
This paper is a little bit different from the others we have been reading as it is primarily a research project about people's reactions to a current issue rather than a specific technology.  I think that the researchers did manage to achieve the goals that they had outlined in the beginning, but there is a lot of room for follow up in this area.  The fact is, as technology continues to advance so will the capacity for its abuse.  I think what we will find in the future is that people simply must maintain constant vigilance if they really want to protect their privacy.