A survey on android security: development and deployment hindrance and best practices

Android OS is the most popular mobile OS for the past few years. Vulnerabilities arise with respect to the increasing functionality of Android OS, impolitic app development practices of developers, end-user incautious and interestingly remediation for the vulnerabilities has been introduced frequently as well. To mitigate security risk factor Google has been updated, deprecated and restricted many system level APIs for 3rd party developers. Considering the consequences, this paper provides a wide overview of Android’s system level app development, privacy issues, and guideline for the developers about what measure they should consider while developing apps. We also discussed the historical development of Android OS and the end-users role to maintain privacy and to minimize security risks

PRICHAIN: A Partially Decentralized Implementation of UbiPri Middleware Using Blockchain

With the popularization of the Internet-of-Things, various applications have emerged to make life easier. These applications generate a large amount of user data. Analyzing the data obtained from these applications, one can infer personal information about each user. Considering this, it is clear that ensuring privacy in this type of application is essential. To guarantee privacy various solutions exist, one of them is UbiPri middleware. This paper presents a decentralized implementation of UbiPri middleware using the Ethereum blockchain. Smart contracts were used in conjunction with a communication gateway and a distributed storage service to ensure users privacy. The results obtained show that the implementation of this work ensures privacy at different levels, data storage security, and performance regarding scalability in the Internet of Things environments.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Ubiquitous computing and natural interfaces for environmental information

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil Gestão e Sistemas AmbientaisThe next computing revolution‘s objective is to embed every street, building, room and object with computational power. Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) will allow every object to receive and transmit information, sense its surroundings and act accordingly, be located from anywhere in the world, connect every person. Everyone will have the possibility to access information, despite their age, computer knowledge, literacy or physical impairment. It will impact the world in a profound way, empowering mankind, improving the environment, but will also create new challenges that our society, economy, health and global environment will have to overcome. Negative impacts have to be identified and dealt with in advance. Despite these concerns, environmental studies have been mostly absent from discussions on the new paradigm. This thesis seeks to examine ubiquitous computing, its technological emergence, raise awareness towards future impacts and explore the design of new interfaces and rich interaction modes. Environmental information is approached as an area which may greatly benefit from ubicomp as a way to gather, treat and disseminate it, simultaneously complying with the Aarhus convention. In an educational context, new media are poised to revolutionize the way we perceive, learn and interact with environmental information. cUbiq is presented as a natural interface to access that information

The Domestication of Voice Activated -Technology & EavesMining: Surveillance, Privacy and Gender Relations at Home

This thesis develops a case study analysis of the Amazon Echo, the first-ever voice-activated smart speaker. The domestication of the devices feminine conversational agent, Alexa, and the integration of its microphone and digital sensor technology in home environments represents a moment of radical change in the domestic sphere. This development is interpreted according to two primary force relations: historical gender patterns of domestic servitude and eavesmining (eavesdropping + datamining) processes of knowledge extraction and analysis. The thesis is framed around three pillars of study that together demonstrate: how routinization with voice-activated technology affects acoustic space and ones experiences of home; how online warm experts initiate a dialogue about the domestication of technology that disregards and ignores Amazons corporate privacy framework; and finally, how the technologys conditions of use silently result in the deployment of ever-intensifying surveillance mechanisms in home environments. Eavesmining processes are beginning to construct a new world of media and surveillance where every spoken word can potentially be heard and recorded, and speaking is inseparable from identification

Modern Socio-Technical Perspectives on Privacy

This open access book provides researchers and professionals with a foundational understanding of online privacy as well as insight into the socio-technical privacy issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems, covering several modern topics (e.g., privacy in social media, IoT) and underexplored areas (e.g., privacy accessibility, privacy for vulnerable populations, cross-cultural privacy). The book is structured in four parts, which follow after an introduction to privacy on both a technical and social level: Privacy Theory and Methods covers a range of theoretical lenses through which one can view the concept of privacy. The chapters in this part relate to modern privacy phenomena, thus emphasizing its relevance to our digital, networked lives. Next, Domains covers a number of areas in which privacy concerns and implications are particularly salient, including among others social media, healthcare, smart cities, wearable IT, and trackers. The Audiences section then highlights audiences that have traditionally been ignored when creating privacy-preserving experiences: people from other (non-Western) cultures, people with accessibility needs, adolescents, and people who are underrepresented in terms of their race, class, gender or sexual identity, religion or some combination. Finally, the chapters in Moving Forward outline approaches to privacy that move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions, explore ethical considerations, and describe the regulatory landscape that governs privacy through laws and policies. Perhaps even more so than the other chapters in this book, these chapters are forward-looking by using current personalized, ethical and legal approaches as a starting point for re-conceptualizations of privacy to serve the modern technological landscape. The book’s primary goal is to inform IT students, researchers, and professionals about both the fundamentals of online privacy and the issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems. Lecturers or teacherscan assign (parts of) the book for a “professional issues” course. IT professionals may select chapters covering domains and audiences relevant to their field of work, as well as the Moving Forward chapters that cover ethical and legal aspects. Academicswho are interested in studying privacy or privacy-related topics will find a broad introduction in both technical and social aspects